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Britain in the Middle East, 1619-1971, by Robert T. Harrison. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. 283 pages. $29.95 paper.
Reviewed by Michael B. Bishku
This work covers British motives and actions in the Middle East from the East India Company's signing of a trade agreement with Safavid Persia to the independence of the Persian Gulf protectorates of Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. However, just as in all efforts to provide comprehensive accounts, coverage of geographical areas and time periods is uneven. Nevertheless, in the process, Robert Harrison does a wonderful job in explaining how and why interests coincided with or differed between the Foreign Office in London and British government of India over the Middle East, an area where the security of communications and transportation through and trade with became essential for both parties until the independence of India in 1947. Also, especially following the First World War, with the mandate system under the League of Nations, the Colonial Office's positions regarding the Middle East entered into the mix. Harrison astutely notes that even before India's independence, the Second World War proved to have a great impact on the fate of the British Empire:
Britain's control of the Middle East would once more become that vital entity of deliverance and triumph as it had been in the Great War. Yet this unchallenged policy unknowingly and inevitably bore the seeds of Britain's demise in the region and retreat in the world (p. 167).
Indeed, not only did Britain alienate many of the people in the region with its policies, it survived the war in a poor financial state and was dependent upon the support of the United States, which was unsympathetic to European imperialism.
Harrison points out that British involvement in the Middle East actually began before 1619 with the Muscovy Company trading with the...