Abstract
The Persian Gulf was at the heart of the Indian sphere. Successive Indian governments had protected British trade routes and enforced a maritime truce in the Gulf. The Indian-appointed political resident at Bushire was the senior British official in the region and, together with subordinate agents and consuls across southern Persia, at Muscat and along the Arabian littoral, he supervised the affairs of the Gulf. India’s interest in Persia itself was twofold: obviously the Indian position in the Gulf demanded a certain involvement in Persia; and, of course, Persia was a key component of India’s frontier policy. While these two factors remained constant, a number of other trends influenced British India’s perception of its role in the region. From the 1850s until the early 1890s, frequent debate ensued on the benefits or otherwise of enhancing India’s political objectives in Persia beyond its traditional range of activities in Seistan and on the Gulf coast. These discussions revolved around the nature of Anglo-Persian relations and the central issue of whether they primarily belonged within the Indian or Imperial orbit of diplomacy. Later, as European rivals posed a greater threat to the security of the Gulf, India was compelled to assess its position and to shape its policy accordingly, which increasingly brought the Imperial government into closer proximity with the Indian system.
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Notes
Earl of Mayo (V), n.d. [1872] cited in W.W. Hunter, A life of the Earl of Mayo: fourth viceroy of India, 2 vols (London, 1875), i, pp. 291
See Kumar, Persian Gulf region, chs 4–6, 8; Busch, Britain and the Persian Gulf, ch. 1; J.B. Kelly, ‘The legal and historical basis of the British position in the Persian Gulf, St. Antony’s papers, 4, Middle Eastern affairs, 1 (London, 1958), pp. 133–5.
CH. Allen, ‘The state of Masqat in the Gulf and East Africa, 1785–1829’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 14 (1982), pp. 117–27.
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© 2003 Robert J. Blyth
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Blyth, R.J. (2003). ‘A Glacis of Varying Breadth and Dimension’: Persia and the Persian Gulf, c. 1850–1914. In: The Empire of the Raj. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230599116_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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