This is the gripping story of Captain Stafford Bettesworth Haines, the first British Governor of Aden from 1839 to 1854, who established Britain's permanent military base in Arabia by storming, and then purchasing, one of the world's great natural harbors. Aden quickly became a hornet's nest of tribal and political rivalries, sucking Britain into ever-more complex commitments

In the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire restored direct rule over Yemen, the resulting turmoil came to threaten the security of the entire Arabian Peninsula. This book describes the various military campaigns to regain control over Yemen, surveying the increased foreign encroachments by the British in the south and the Italians through the Red Sea, and the revolts of the Zaidi Imams and Isma'ili tribes. Using previously unknown archival material, this history of political rivalries and challenges confronting Ottoman Yemen in the 19th century should prove useful for scholars and students.

Since 2011, civil wars and state failure have wracked the Arab world, underlying the misalignment between national identity and political borders. In Break all the Borders, Ariel I. Ahram examines the separatist movements that aimed to remake those borders and create new independent states. With detailed studies of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the federalists in eastern Libya, the southern resistance in Yemen, and Kurdish nationalist parties, Ahram explains how separatists captured territory and handled the tasks of rebel governance, including managing oil exports, electricity grids, and irrigation networks. Ahram emphasizes that the separatism arose not just as an opportunistic response to state collapse. Rather, separatists drew inspiration from the legacy of Woodrow Wilson and ideal of self-determination. They sought to reinstate political autonomy that had been lost during the early and mid-twentieth century. Speaking to the international community, separatist promised a more just and stable world order. In Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, they served as key allies against radical Islamic groups. Yet their hopes for international recognition have gone unfulfilled. Separatism is symptomatic of the contradictions in sovereignty and statehood in the Arab world. Finding ways to integrate, instead of eliminate, separatist movements may be critical for rebuilding regional order.

A major history of the British Empire’s early involvement in the Middle East Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 showed how vulnerable India was to attack by France and Russia. It forced the British Empire to try to secure the two routes that a European might use to reach the subcontinent—through Egypt and the Red Sea, and through Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Promised Lands is a panoramic history of this vibrant and explosive age. Charting the development of Britain’s political interest in the Middle East from the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimean War in the 1850s, Jonathan Parry examines the various strategies employed by British and Indian officials, describing how they sought influence with local Arabs, Mamluks, Kurds, Christians, and Jews. He tells a story of commercial and naval power—boosted by the arrival of steamships in the 1830s—and discusses how classical and biblical history fed into British visions of what these lands might become. The region was subject to the Ottoman Empire, yet the sultan’s grip on it appeared weak. Should Ottoman claims to sovereignty be recognised and exploited, or ignored and opposed? Could the Sultan’s government be made to support British objectives, or would it always favour France or Russia? Promised Lands shows how what started as a geopolitical contest became a drama about diplomatic competition, religion, race, and the unforeseen consequences of history.

Offering a new perspective on a little-studied society, On the Edge of Empire examines the gradual incorporation of the Qu`ayti and Kathiri sultanates of Hadhramawt in the southern Arabian Peninsula into the British Empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Boxberger shows how changes in political and social institutions fostered contestation at all levels, from rivalries over territory and political power, to heated debates over religious and educational reform, to efforts to regulate wedding customs and women's dress. Based on extensive fieldwork, this ethnographic and historical narrative draws upon a wide variety of sources, including British documents and accounts; local documents, manuscripts and rare printed materials; extensive interviews with Hadhrami elders from all walks of life; and proverbs, poetry, and tribal lore. Clearly written and richly textured, this book is a welcome contribution to the study of Yemen, the historical ethnography of the Middle East, and the literature on the Islamic societies of the Indian Ocean littoral.