Security in the Gulf Local Militaries before British Withdrawal

The British Empire employed a diverse range of strategies to establish and then maintain control over its overseas territories in the Middle East. This new interpretation of how Britain maintained order, protected its interests and carried out its defence obligations in the Gulf in the decades before its withdrawal from the region in 1971 looks at how the British government increasingly sought to achieve security with great economy of force by building up local militaries instead of deploying costly military forces from the home country. Benefitting from the extensive use of recently declassified British Government archival documents and India Office records, this highly original narrative weighs the successes and failures of Britain's use of 'indirect rule' among the small states of Eastern Arabia, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the seven Trucial States and Oman. Drawing important lessons for scholars and policymakers about the limitations of trying to outsource security to local partners, Security in the Gulf is a remarkable study of the deployment of British colonial policy in the Middle East before 1971.

Introduction. Local militaries and imperialism; 1. Patterns of protection in the Gulf; 2. British India and local security arrangements; 3. Local militaries and intensified British interests; 4. Intervention or local means of coercion?: unrest in Bahrain and Qatar; 5. Local forces and Britain's Silver Age in the Gulf; 6. Securing the Gulf after Britain's withdrawal; Conclusion. Security on the cheap?

Ash Rossiter is Assistant Professor of International Security in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi where his research focuses on technology and international security, the changing character of war, and the shifting geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific Region. He is the author of numerous articles in leading security studies and history journals, including the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Defense Studies and Parameters. Prior to academia, he pursued a career in the Middle East, spanning both the public and private sectors.