THE ARABIAN PENINSULA IN MODERN TIMES: A - JEPeterson.net

By the mid‐20 th century, Britain had established a crown colony in Aden and protectorates
over its hinterland, gathered the small Gulf states into de jure or de facto protected status, and
effectively checked Saudi expansion. This required an administrative apparatus that was
exceedingly modest given the vast territory under British control. Earlier works have
concentrated on arrangements in Aden – although Simon Smith has made a more recent
contribution – but Omer al‐Omery and James Onley have written on the residency system in
the Gulf and former ambassadors Richard Muir and Terence Clark have traced the history of
British missions in Kuwait and Oman respectively. Onley also treats the role of the Gulf in the
British Empire, focusing on the reach of British India, while Robert Blyth discusses the struggle
between British India and London for control in the Gulf. John Willis looks at the role of British
India in Yemen while Christian Lekon narrows the subject to the British role in the
Hadramawt. 65
The somewhat wider subject of British relations with regional states and British activities
has attracted a plethora of authors who have examined most aspects of the British presence.
Shafi Aldamer looks at Anglo‐Saudi relations around the period of World War II while relations
with Kuwait in the pre‐1961 period 1961 have been studied by Simon Smith, Andrew
Loewenstein, and Miriam Joyce. Smith and Joyce also contribute studies of relations with
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, and an article on British relations with Yemen.
Christopher Davidson also looks at Britain and the Trucial States (as does Miriam Joyce) while
Hussain al‐Mousawi, Lawrence Timpe, and Miriam Joyce Haron examine aspects of the several
centuries of the British‐Omani relationship. Timothy Paris studies the British role in al‐Hijaz,
where the Hashimis were eventually defeated by the Al Sa‘ud and forced to accept the British
offer of thrones in Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan. 66 The gradual British drawdown from its East of
the region: “Subjectivity and Imperial Masculinity: A British Soldier in Dhofar (1968-1970),” Journal of Middle
East Women’s Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Spring 2008), pp. 60-80.
65. Omer Saleh al-Omery, “The Resident in the Gulf: British Power in Transition, 1858-1872” (Ph.D. thesis,
University of Essex, 1989); Simon C. Smith, “Rulers and Residents: British Relations with the Aden Protectorate,
1937-1959,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (1995), pp. 509-523; Christian Lekon, “The British and
Hadhramaut (Yemen), 1863-1967: A Contribution to Robinson’s Multicausal Theory of Imperialism” (Ph.D. thesis,
London School of Economics, 2000); Robert J. Blyth, “Britain Versus India in the Persian Gulf: The Struggle for
Political Control, c.1928-48,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2000), pp. 901-11;
James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (London: Oxford University Press, 2007; adapted from his
“The Infrastructure of Informal Empire: A Study of Britain’s Native Agency in Bahrain, c.1816-1900” (DPhil
thesis, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 2001); ibid., “The Politics of Protection in the Gulf: The Arab
Rulers and the British Resident in the Nineteenth Century.” New Arabian Studies, Vol. 6 (2004), pp. 30-92; ibid.,
“Britain’s Native Agents in Arabia and Persia in the Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies of South Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East, Vol. 24, No. 1 (2004), pp. 131-139; Richard Muir, “Kuwait,” in Hugh Arbuthnott,
Terence Clark, and Richard Muir, British Missions Around the Gulf, 1575-2005: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman
(Folkestone, Kent, UK: Global Oriental, 2008), pp. 169-226; Terence Clark, “Oman,” in British Missions Around
the Gulf, pp. 229-253; John M. Willis, “Making Yemen Indian: Rewriting the Boundaries of Imperial Arabia,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1 (February 2009), pp. 23-38.
66. Shafi Aldamer, Saudi Arabia and Britain: Changing Relations, 1939-1953 (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2003);
Hussain Ben Al-Seyed Yousuf Hashim al-Mousawi, “A History of Omani-British Relations, with Special Reference
to the Period 1888-1920” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1990); G. Lawrence Timpe, “British Foreign Policy
Toward the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, 1954-1959” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Exeter, July 1991); Miriam
Joyce, Kuwait, 1945-1996: An Anglo-American Perspective (London: Frank Cass, 1998); ibid., Ruling Shaikhs and
Her Majesty’s Government, 1960-1969 (London: Frank Cass, 2003); ibid. (Miriam Joyce Haron), “Britain and the
Sultan of Muscat and Oman and Dependencies, 1958-59,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1993),
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