With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context. Tancred Bradshaw – an academic historian with extensive experience in the region – sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and – most importantly – the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context. Tancred Bradshaw – an academic historian with extensive experience in the region – sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and – most importantly – the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

An original and perceptive study of Britain's withdrawal from her last Arab dependencies - the Sudan, South West Arabia and the Gulf States.

This book is a major and wide-ranging re-assessment of Anglo-American relations in the Middle Eastern context. It analyses the process of ending of empire in the Middle East from 1945 to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Based on original research into both British and American archival sources, it covers all the key events of the period, including the withdrawal from Palestine, the Anglo-American coup against the Musaddiq regime in Iran, the Suez Crisis and its aftermath, the Iraqi and Yemeni revolutions, and the Arab-Israeli conflicts. It demonstrates that, far from experiencing a ‘loss of nerve’ or tamely acquiescing in a transfer of power to the United States, British decision-makers robustly defended their regional interests well into the 1960s and even beyond. It also argues that concept of the ‘special relationship’ impeded the smooth-running of Anglo-American relations in the region by obscuring differences, stymieing clear communication, and practising self-deception on policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic who assumed a contiguity which all too often failed to exist. With the Middle East at the top of the contemporary international policy agenda, and recent Anglo-American interventions fuelling interest in empire, this is a timely book of importance to all those interested in the contemporary development of the region.

This book critically examines the origins of American diplomacy in the greater Persian Gulf region, arguing that it was the inability of the United States to contend effectively with the disintegration of British imperial authority in the Gulf that eventually led it to assume its current role in the region.

UK ties with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies are under the spotlight as never before. Huge controversy surrounds Britain’s alliances with these deeply repressive regimes, and the UK’s key supporting role in the disastrous Saudi-led intervention in Yemen has lent added urgency to the debate. What lies behind the British government’s decision to place politics before principles in the Gulf? Why have Anglo-Arabian relations grown even closer in recent years, despite ongoing, egregious human rights violations? In this ground-breaking analysis, David Wearing argues that the Gulf Arab monarchies constitute the UK’s most important and lucrative alliances in the global south. They are central both to the British government’s ambitions to retain its status in the world system, and to its post-Brexit economic strategy. Exploring the complex and intertwined structures of UK-Gulf relations in trade and investment, arms sales and military cooperation, and energy, Wearing shines a light on the shocking lengths to which the British state has gone in order to support these regimes. As these issues continue to make the headlines, this book lifts the lid on ‘AngloArabia’ and what’s at stake for both sides.