'The Middle Eastern question or some political problems of Indian defence' [‎160r] (324/616)

THE TRUCIAL CHIEFS
2 53
treaty concluded in 1861. How untoward were to be
the consequences of the indifference with which Turkish
pretensions in the Gulf were originally treated, few
people realised until the Koweyt question imported into
our local differences with Turkey international interests
of a much wider bearing. I have already dealt at length
with the complications to which that question has opened
the door. It may at present be only a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand, but such clouds are often in these
latitudes the presage of severe storms.
To the south of the territory to which Turkey lays
claim stretches the long line of coast which is still
called the Pirate Coast, though now only in memory of
the past. This was the scene of the severest struggles
we fought as guardians of the peace of the Persian
Gulf, and the loyalty to their engagements of the six
Trucial chiefs who rule over the tribes we forcibly
reclaimed from the wildest outlawry in the first half of
the last century has borne testimony ever since to the
efficiency of a beneficent but vigorous statesmanship.
The whole series of engagements, beginning with the
treaty of 1820, which was merely an initial attempt to
restrain the chiefs from overt acts of piracy, down to
the treaty of 1853, which imposed upon them perpetual
maritime peace, and that of 1873, by which they under
took to prohibit altogether the traffic in slaves, deserves
to be studied. For it forms a wonderful record of the
perseverance, skill, and intelligence displayed by genera
tions of devoted Anglo-Indian officials, whose names
may be already forgotten, but whose work still endures.
Still more satisfactory are the relations of friendship
we have maintained without any serious break for up
wards of a century with the Sultans of Muscat, whose
territory, facing Persian Mekran, commands the