How a string of truces with Britain became the United Arab Emirates
The sheikhdoms along the southern Gulf coast got their old name from a series of truces signed with Britain in the 19th century. For about 150 years they sat under an ambiguous British shield. When it lifted on 1 December 1971, six of them formed the United Arab Emirates the very next day.
British officials called this shore the Pirate Coast, blaming raiders, above all the Al Qasimi, now the ruling families of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, for harassing British-flagged ships. The first clash came in 1797, when the vessel Bassein was seized and let go two days later; the Al Qasimi leader Saqr bin Rashid denied involvement. To protect British Indian trade near the Strait of Hormuz, expeditions struck Ras al-Khaimah and other harbours in 1809 and, far more destructively, in 1819.
The General Maritime Treaty of 1820 followed, with sheikhs signing one after another through January and March of that year, some aboard the ship of Major-General William Keir Grant. It did not bring calm. Skirmishes continued until 1835, when the sheikhs agreed to a truce covering the pearling season, and further short agreements led to a ten-year truce in 1843. Seeing how pearling and trade prospered in peacetime, the rulers signed a permanent maritime peace in 1853. Other treaties from 1847 onward committed them to ending the slave trade.
Wary of French and Russian ambitions, Britain tightened the bond in 1892 through exclusivity agreements, modelled on one with Bahrain in 1880. The resulting status of protected state stopped short of a formal protectorate: Britain defended the sheikhdoms against outside attack and in return held exclusive rights there. Membership shifted. Kalba won trucial status in 1936 because it was picked for a backup landing strip for Imperial Airways, then rejoined Sharjah in 1951. Fujairah was the last admitted, in 1952, after an oil company pressed London so it could prospect the whole east coast.
That same year a Trucial States Council began encouraging the seven rulers to cooperate. Money was borrowed too: the Indian rupee served as the everyday currency until a Gulf rupee arrived in 1959. After the treaties ended in 1971, Abu Dhabi and Dubai joined Sharjah, Fujairah, Ajman and Umm Al Quwain to create the UAE, and Ras Al Khaimah joined on 10 February 1972.
Source: Trucial States
