A map of the Arabian Peninsula shows one dominant fact: Saudi Arabia. It consumes nearly nine-tenths of Arabia’s landmass. It stretches from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, yet it stops there. Its dominion excluded three small states on its northeastern frontier: Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. They do not exist because they were too strong to be absorbed. Instead, they exist because a far more powerful force ensured their survival. That power was Great Britain.
Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, had an ambition to unify Arabia under his flag. Yet at the dawn of the 20th century, his reach was limited. His power was confined to Nejd, that is, central Arabia. British records bluntly state that “from 1865 to 1901, the Saudi family are of merely local political importance. Cut off from the coast and confined to the centre of Arabia their influence is of the smallest.”
Everything would change when Ibn Saud expelled the Ottomans from Al Hassa in eastern Arabia. Ibn Saud expanded his dominion to include the eastern shores of Arabia alongside the Persian Gulf. He was no longer a local ruler in central Arabia. He had now crossed an invisible line, one loosely defined by the Anglo-Ottoman conventions. The Gulf was Britain's maritime domain. It had been since the early 19th century. The Sheikdoms alongits coast included Bahrain, Kuwait, the Trucial Coast of Oman, Qatar, and Oman. Each of
these sheikdoms signed treaties giving exclusive rights to Great Britain in their pearling and sponge fishing. Britain left them to rule their hinterland. In return, England provided them with maritime protection and legitimized their rule. These treaties ensured the British
maritime control and security over the Gulf. At the same time, although these treaties legitimized their rule, they stripped them of any power they might have had to establish relations with the world. Great Britain held a monopoly over access to the Gulf Sheikdoms.
Ibn Saud understood what expansion into the Gulf would give him. Although Najd gave him tribal authority over many tribes, the Gulf gave him something much more valuable: British relations. In 1915, relations between Ibn Saud and Great Britain were formalized. The latter recognized Ibn Saud's rule and provided him with financial support. For Britain, it helped strip the Ottomans of an ally and maintain its maritime superiority.
In the 1920s, Ibn Saud tested every line Britain had. Ibn Saud was not a sheik seeking a foreign sponsor to legitimize his rule. He was achieving his dream of unifying Arabia. His rivals were irrelevant. By 1922, the Rashidi dynasty, the powerhouse of central Arabia, had fallen. Even their leader, Ibn Rashid, admitted that the tribes of Arabia had given their loyalty to Ibn Saud, saying, “Najd and all the interior from Al Kahaf to the valley of Duwasir... are subjects of Ibn Saud. I, Ibn Rashid, have nothing to do with them.”
Great Britain believed it could contain Ibn Saud, but it was wrong. The 1920s saw a series of British mediations between Ibn Saud and his neighbors. These were aimed at containing his expansion across Arabia. This included expansion towards the Trucial States and Kuwait, to name a few. At the time, they held strategic positions along the Gulf. Kuwait, located in the northern part of the Persian Gulf, was well suited for a British air base and station. The sheikdoms on the Trucial Coast provided Great Britain with security in the southern part of the Gulf, keeping rival powers at a distance.
Britain was aware of its position in Kuwait, believing that without British protection and backing, Kuwait would fall back to Iraq or would be consumed by Ibn Saud. A confidential British dispatch from the British Residency in Bushire noted, “It has been common
talk in the bazaars of Basrah in the past that Kuwait must join up either with Ibn Saud, with Iraq or Great Britain.” The dispatch further added, “It must be an essential part of our policy that Kuwait should be kept apart from Iraq — it is inevitable that it should be the tendency of Iraq gradually to assimilate Kuwait."
Although the British stopped the expansion of the modern-day Saudi Kingdom into Kuwait and the Trucial Coast, they could not do the same with Transjordan and the Kingdom of Hejaz. The years 1923 and 1924 were consumed by tribal attacks and by talks mediated by the British between Ibn Saud and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. These talks and negotiations saw Great Britain, which held the mandate over Transjordan, and Emir Abdullah concede Al-Jauf after a year of negotiations. Ibn Saud absorbed a valuable oasis into his largely desert kingdom, with more viable terrain to come.
In 1924, while Ibn Saud was negotiating over the borders with Transjordan, he was engaging in open conflict with the Hashemites in Hejaz. King Hussein of Hejaz, without British backing, was beginning to lose his power. King Hussein’s bitterness over the postwar settlement of World War I led him to refuse signing any treaties with Great Britain that might have aligned their interests. Yet when he abdicated his throne to his son Ali, Hejaz had already lost some of its territory to Ibn Saud. It was not long before King Ali surrendered the Hejaz to Ibn Saud in 1925 and went to live in Jordan under his brother Abdullah’s rule.
Today’s borders of Arabia do not represent balanced power; they represent a major power that halted its expansion in the face of British mediation. The border lines drawn by British maritime interests remain. The interests they serve have changed.
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