Articles From Our Experts

New communication technologies transformed bookkeeping practice at the British Residency in Bushire.

A small, unprepossessing file from the India Office Records contains some of the earliest surviving aerial photographs of Qatar, captured as the country was about to enter a new chapter in its history.

There are many different types of vessels used from the Red Sea to India. All of them have developed over the years to suit the local conditions. This is the third article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the India Office Records.

An Italian bombing raid brought Bahrain into the Second World War’s ‘zone of operations’, sparking fear amongst Bahrainis and concerns amongst the British over the safety of the islands’ strategic oil installations.

Germany’s desire for ‘a place in the sun’ saw her challenge Britain’s commercial dominance in the Gulf in the early years of the twentieth century.

How geophysicists working in the Gulf were able to contribute in the 1930s to the scientific community’s understanding of the earth’s magnetic field.

While much of the world was experiencing the effects of global war in the first half of the 1940s, the Gulf by contrast was an oasis of calm.

The vast trove of material held at the British Library that pertains to Britain’s Colonial exploits owe their present organisation in part to the early acknowledgement by officials in the EIC and India Office of the importance of record-keeping.

While Britain’s more distinct political and strategic interests in the Gulf grew over time, it was initially a matter of textile trading with Persia that first lured them to the shores of the Gulf.

With the oil industry booming in Bahrain in the early 1930s, BAPCO oil workers, amongst others, lobbied for the first cinemas to be established.

Ships have always been important in the history of the Gulf, and therefore are prominent in the India Office Records and other documents on the QDL. This is the first article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the records.

The culmination of extensive travel and research, George Curzon’s Persia and the Persian Question was a critical success. Yet was its author happy with it?

There are numerous records relating to high-level British officials in the Gulf, but the letters in the India Office Establishment Files also reveal the working conditions of the lower-paid ranks of Agency staff.

In spite of legally abolishing slavery in its Empire in 1833, the British Government struggled to eradicate the practice in its protectorates in the Gulf.

An overview of India Office Military Department records relating to Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and the Arabian Peninsula.

The short-lived escapades of the Sponge Exploration Syndicate.

What do the Gombroon Diaries convey about eighteenth-century Persia [Iran] and the Gulf (1708-1763)?

Beyond Sykes and Picot, the India Office Records reveal the complex historical and political junctures that shaped the map of today's Middle East.

Bertram Thomas completed his historic crossing of the Empty Quarter in 1931, then the largest territory in the world outside Antarctica still unexplored by Europeans. But why is he still a minor figure in the history of exploration and Empire?

In the late 1940s an American Mission Hospital was in development in Doha. The response of British officials seems to have been motivated more by the demands of the nascent oil industry and concerns over loss of influence than intrinsic concern for the health of the people of Qatar.

Bahrain’s Order in Council gave the Political Agent the power to, on one hand, issue birth certificates, and on the other, to rule on capital punishment for convicted criminals.

Despite inauspicious beginnings, Shaikh Aḥmad al-Jābir Āl Ṣabāḥ’s official visit to England in 1919 proved a success.

An overview of records on the Qatar Digital Library created by Britain’s Residency Agency in present-day UAE (IOR/R/15/4), including a description of the records, the subjects they cover, and how they are organised.

Salim Rashid Suri, an Omani ṣawt singer and oud player became famous as the ‘singing sailor’ and for developing a truly unique style, which took influence from musical sources across the Middle East and India.

For over a hundred years, in tandem with the colonisation of Palestinian land, Palestinian history has been systematically erased, suppressed, and distorted. The QDL however contains multiple sources on Palestine and Palestinians.

J. G. Lorimer’s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia has long been used as a central source for the study of the region. Yet, it is essential to understand the contexts of its production in order to fully appreciate its content.

A government department unique in its scope and power, the India Office had a profound impact on the history of the Gulf.

Qatar’s exploratory wells were drilled relatively late, although Major Frank Holmes sought an exploratory lease in 1922.

Sharjah 1940, and Nazi radio broadcasts in Arabic filled the air, stirring pro-German sentiment amongst the town’s inhabitants – and provoking consternation amongst British officials.

In November 1917, St John Philby was sent from Basra on a mission to cross the desert and meet with Ibn Sa‘ud. It was an expedition that changed his life.

An Islamic seal with an unusual bird design appears on a witness statement delivered by the Sheikh of Dubai to the British Resident in The Gulf, following a fatal gun battle in Dubai in 1910.

In the early 20th century, British Officials responsible for the administration of justice in cases concerning British subjects and foreigners in the Gulf had to maintain a delicate balance, so as not to stoke bad relations between neighbouring states.

Appearing in files from Bahrain in the 1930s, the terms ‘Holi’ (singular) and ‘Hawala’ (plural) are not immediately recognisable to most readers. Gulf History cataloguers take a closer look at the terms to decipher their meanings.

The subject of railways appears time and again in the India Office Records. What was Britain’s obsession with them and how did they transform how Britain thought about, protected, and ran its empire?

As the oil industry developed in the late 1940s, Britain was keen to place a Political Agent in Qatar. To do this the British had to come to an understanding with the Shaikh of Qatar on matters of slavery without being seen to interfere.

It’s hard to imagine a natural resource as important to the history of the development of the Gulf States as oil. But in the early days of oil exploration, nothing was more important than water.

Wherever European navies sailed, they introduced their own designs of ships and adapted those they saw being used locally. This is the second article in a series of three by the author, providing context and explanation for nautical terminology in the India Office Records.

In 1920, a gift from Ibn Saud in the form of a female oryx was the first ever to have survived the difficult journey from Arabia to London.

During WWII food shortages in the Middle East caused by locust swarms were tackled by a largely forgotten, but ultimately successful war supported by British administrators in the Gulf.

In 1910, British officials discovered that the Persian authorities at Bandar-e Lengeh were charging travellers a domestic rate to travel to Bahrain, reigniting a decades-long dispute over Persian claims to the islands.

Following the formation of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Britain continued to maintain close relations with the new state’s founder and ruler, King Ibn Sa‘ūd, although it would eventually be supplanted by the United States in its role as Saudi Arabia’s key western sponsor and protector.

In the wake of Indian independence and the United States’ increasing presence, British administrators sought to remind the Gulf’s inhabitants of who remained nominally in control of the region.

The 1930s was the decade that transformed the Gulf from its role as conduit between Britain and her empire to a strategic locus in the run-up to the war and a ‘highway between east and west’.

Britain and its Allies maintained supremacy over the Gulf’s airspace during the Second World War, but mechanical failure could quickly turn the tables, making crewmen dependent on the region’s local population for their survival.

The establishment of the Bahrain Agency in 1900 cemented previous British interest in the Persian Gulf and set the tone for increased economic and political involvement in the 20th century.

Negotiation and improvisation formed the basis of the Gulf’s early aviation industry.

The family background, business activities, financial and political influence of the Qusaybi brothers, the eventual division of the family business, and their commercial and political legacy.

Due to increased tensions between the British and French, in the 1780s, the Gulf was drawn into a global battle for supremacy. Spying was a significant aspect of the struggle to control strategic shipping routes.

From 1900 to 1933 the Persian Oil Concession was the backdrop to a stand-off between the British and newly-renamed Iran.

The 1948 visit of Shaikh Khalīfa bin Mohammed Āl Khalīfa to Britain on a training trip arranged by the British Council provides an early example of cooperation between Britain and Bahrain in matters related to policing and security.