279. Partition: How Dubai Almost Became Part of India (Part 2)

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of MPa a chat community discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, ad free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to MPa Club at www.mpa.orguk.com Hello and welcome to MPa with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Durimple. And we continue our mini series with Sandra Rimple discussing his rather excellent five partitions that reshaped modern Asia. And in this episode, which I think is actually one of the most intriguing of all of the chapters that you've covered in this history, is the history of the Arabian Peninsula, which honestly you would not put together with the Indian Raj at all. So let's talk about this because a century ago, a large part, we're talking about Oman Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait were legally part of India. Sandra Rimple, discuss and why don't we know this? Yes, why? Why is this forgotten? How come that none of us knew it? It's been kind of forgotten. And I think each of the nation states involved, be it India, the UAE Kuwait Bahrain has kind of written over this. And it was really forgotten until this guy called James Onley, this professor in archivist, was hired by the Qatari government to create what's known as the Qatar Digital Library, which is really good and anyone should go online, anyone who's doing research is one of the best archives out there. I got lost four weeks in that archive. It is extraordinary. I was honestly searching for a really obscure name, a British name that had served in India and I knew had been in Muscat. And then suddenly you've got his handwriting, you've got reports about him, it's replete with these gems that I just had no idea existed until this archive was made open. It was fabulous. So he's basically sent out to try and find any documents on the history of Qatar before oil, because that's when most Qatari histories tend to begin, really. He discovers that most of the archives on Qatar are not sitting in Qatar and they're not sitting in the Arabian Peninsula. They're not sitting in London. They're sitting in Bombay and that basically the entire Swayv, this ring from from Aden and what's now Yemen all the way up to Kuwait, basically the whole peninsula, bar North Yemen and Saudi Arabia, had been part of the Bombay presidency and essentially been ruled as princely states of Bombay. Just clarify for those who don't know what at princely state was. Crucially only two thirds of the Raj was what we call British India, directly conquered and ruled by the Brits. A third was ruled by some 570-something states that had given up their foreign policy and defense over to the viceroy and the Indian army, but were more or less internally independent. Now anyone who goes to India on holiday may have been to Jai Pau, Jodh Pau, the blue city, the desert city of Jaisalmer. These were all princely states. These were all not directly ruled by the British government in the way that say Delhi or Kolkata were. Likewise if you went to Pakistan, Barulpur, Kalat and Chitral are all princely states that joined Pakistan. But what we forget is that states like Nepal, Bhutan, Dubai, Oman were all princely states too and were separated off before Indian independence. And that's what happens with the Gulf. So if you look, if you open the Al-Khabanama, which is the list of princely states that are subservient to the vice-war of India, it opens alphabetically with Abu Dhabi. And on the same page you can see, you can have Bhutan and Lahed and all these other states that are not part of India today. There's a passport that I managed to find of a Yemeni Jewish woman who wants to migrate to Mandate Palestine after the Balfour Declaration declares it to homeland for the Jewish people. And in order to migrate from modern-day Yemen to modern-day Jerusalem, she has to get an Indian passport because by virtue of being born in Aidan, she is an Indian citizen. Extraordinary lost world, none of us realise this, but you say that there's a reason that we're ignorant, that the British actually went out of their way not to emphasise these states were part of India. Well, I mean, not even visualise it. I mean, visualising it was a problem. I mean, maps showing that that line around what was, you know, the Indian part of the empire. I mean, they just didn't really exist, did they? Precisely. So to avoid the Ia of Istanbul, basically, the Ottoman Empire had acclaimed to the whole of the peninsula and to avoid a diplomatic dispute, the Arab states of the Gulf were always left off maps. And there's a Royal Asian society lecturer who says, as a jealous shake, veils his favourite wife. So the British veiled their activities in the Arabian Peninsula. Crucially, Sam, you'd point out that, in a sense, it wasn't the favourite wife, that these places, which today we think of as incredibly rich. I mean, anyone would like to get their hands on the treasuries of Qatar and Dubai. But in Raj terms, and as later as the 1930s and 40s, they were one gun salutes. They were, they were very minor princely states or zero gun salutes, as opposed to say, Hydra Bad, which was what a 21 gun? Exactly. And Jaipur, which had 17 gun salutes. This was something, one of those absurd Raj ceremonial, whereby each ruler had a number of guns that would go off when he arrived somewhere. And there was vast competition between them. I knew a 15 or a 17 or a 21, or in the case of Dubai at Abu Dhabi zero guns. No one would salute them when they turned out. The only one that had a lot was Oman, which was also I think a 21 gun salute. So was recognised as a major princely state. But so, you know, bits of Yemen, a part of the East India Company from 1830s when the East India Company first annexes aid it. Before Lahore. Yeah, exactly. So, so yeah, yeah, it was part of the Raj, or part of the East India Company, before the Lahore, which in its sense is the, is the archetypal sort of Kipling Indian city. It's extraordinary. But the Gulf states, kind of to the east of Yemen, are brought into the Raj a bit later. There are treaties between these states and the Raj from the early 19th century. But it's only in with Lord Kursan, the vice-roy whose most famous for dividing Bengal and later helping to save all sorts of bits of English heritage like Bodium Castle. It's Kursan who has a Der Bar, this kind of, you know, a court holds court in Sharja in the early 20th century and begins integrating them completely as princely states. And he has this quote, "O man should be considered as much a native state of the Indian Empire as Lusbalah or Kalat," which are two states in modern day Baluchistan. Sam, one of the things you found which, which will be interest at least the Indian listeners here, is that a lot of these Arabian princes sent their sons to boarding school to the posh, sort of eaten of India, which was Mayo College in Rajasthan, where they would have their own house with their own elephant alongside the son of the Maharaja of Jaipur and Jobpur. Yeah, and crucially, the sultans of Oman in the early 20s and 30s are more fluent in Urdu, an Indian language than they are in Arabic, which sort of alienates them from their people to some extent. And the language of the Omani army, Urdu remains one of the languages of the Omani army till very, very late. There's all sorts of things, you know, you get all these Yemeni princes showing up at the Delhi Der Bar. And most importantly though, I think many of the princes of the region would have considered themselves part of the Indian sphere of influence, but you often get the question you how much did the average person in what's known as the Arabian Raj actually feel Indian. The answer is not that much. So the average person in Dubai probably wouldn't have known that much that they were considered legally Indian, but in the big cities they were. So Aydan, specifically, you have many Arabs considering themselves Indian nationalists. There's a particularly guy called Muhammad Ali Lukman, who's one of the great founding fathers of modern Yemen. And throughout the early 20th century, he's traveling around with the great Dalit leader Ambedkar. He's a massive fan of Gandhi. He's actually Gandhi's Arabic translator whenever he comes to address the Indian national Congress in Aydan. And he whilst critical of the fact that the only history Arabs are taught in schools across the peninsula is about the Mughals and the reign of Tipu Sultan and the Maratas and nothing about Arab history. He nonetheless has an intense sense of an Indian identity, this idea that Arabs can be Indians too, just in the same way that a Punjabi or a Bengali. We'll come onto Lukman in more detail in a second, but I just want to just go back to Kersen because we've mentioned this before. This man was the viceroy of India. Even when he was at university, people found him pompous and arrogant. George Nathaniel Kersen is a most superior person. Thank you for taking the words right out of my mouth. Yes, thank you. But I mean, the thing is though he believed in pomp and ceremony. You mentioned the guns alludes, but there is also a visual image of what he thought of the peninsula states, because you know, he may have wanted them to be included, but this photograph that exists in the British Library. It shows Kersen, he liked to sort of sit in the middle of all this to show his grandeur and all of the noabs and all of the, you know, the rages and Maharajas would have to come and bow before him as a sequence to show that, you know, British Empire is supreme. You may be a princely state, you may have jewels and diamonds, but you bow to us. In India, they were given quite a lot of respect. In the photograph that was taken at Charger, they don't even have chairs some of them. They're sitting on the ground around him or kneeling before him. So although he wanted them present in this sort of great India of his, he didn't want them to forget their place and their place was very low to the ground. So the Gulf states are, he views as particularly small essentially. So I think several of the states of Monday Yemen, as well as the state of Oman, were very important in his eyes and were given a massive respect. But as far as he was concerned with the shakes of Dubai and and Doha and Charger, they were right at the bottom of the Imperial Packing Order. And one of the great stories that is emerged from this book is the fact that there is this complete reversal. So today, Indians go to the Gulf and are often treated quite badly in a servant. As housekeepers, yeah, or taxis in Dubai. And 100 years ago today, the reverse was true. You had Arabs from Dubai moving to Bombay, etc. as servants. This is wonderful quote that I managed to find of a Qatari man who was very pleased that the tables had turned. And whilst he was once hit for stealing an Indian official's apple and was kind of, you know, basically beaten, now the Indians come to Qatara's servants and he can do the same to them. It's slightly dark but strange. So let's go back to this fascinating guy, Muhammad Ali Lukman because he is from an Arab family in Adenesh, you say, but he feels Indian. I mean, not only feels Indian, but he speaks Indian languages as well, doesn't he? I mean, it's what Gujarati is one of his languages. Hindi is one of his languages. He writes a short story about life and Gujarati. He's got cousins in Gujarat. And he writes that for many years after becoming Gandhi's translator, I eulogized the aims of the Indian Congress. And it's only in the kind of 1930s that he begins propagating Arab solidarity and disseminating Arab aspirations instead. So there's this reversal that just as Burma that we discussed in the last episode, just as Burmese people are beginning to feel alienated from India. You get people like Gandhi saying, "You're not really Indian though, are you?" Because, you know, you weren't featured in the great Hindu epic for Mahabharata. And exactly the same moment, the same sort of attitude as being applied to Arabs like Lukman. He's being told, "Well, you're not really Indian. Aden's a part of the Indian empire, but you're not really Indian." Somehow similar was this to the way that many Arabs would have felt Turkish being under Ottoman rule. Was it parallel to that? So it's rather interesting. So, yes, it's definitely similar. One of the things interestingly that really alienates Arabs like Lukman from this kind of Pan-Indian identity is the fact that most Indian Muslims support the Ottoman caliphate and really, you know, think that the downfall of the caliphate in World War I and the independence of the Arab states, I think, Lawrence of Arabia time. Many Indian Muslims think this is an awful thing, that the caliphate is the leader of the world's Sunni Muslims and should be propped back up. Whereas Arabs like Lukman begin to feel like why you're supporting a colonial power that's dominating Arabs. And so a wedge begins to form even between Arab Muslims and Indian Muslims in a sense. It's so extraordinary. We never have this image of Arabia divided between the Ottoman empire and the British empire, but it is a cleavage and it's a very important one. Let's cast our eye on Aden more closely because on the same day, in the last episode, we talked about the partition of Burma. On the same day, April 1, 1937, you have the decision to separate Aden from India. And this is the telegram that George VI reads out. Aden has been an integral part of British Indian administration for nearly 100 years. The political association with my Indian empire will now be broken and Aden will take its place in my colonial empire. Why do they decide to do this and why do they decide to do it now? So there's multiple things going on here at once. You've got an increasing sense that India might be independent in the future. It's the express aim of the Congress and frankly separating off these bits that Indian nationalists don't want mean that we can potentially keep them in the future. There's this guy Bernard Riley, who's one of the governors in Aden. And he's constantly going on about how much reforms in the Arabian Peninsula are always bogged down by the vast Indian bureaucracy. That's always more focused on events in Bengal and Punjab than it is on events in Aden. And so he definitely was pushing separation just for the sake of economic reforms. And then there's a growing sense that in the wake of World War I there's more of a sense of Arab nationalism that's growing. And a sense that maybe these regions should be looking more to Cairo and Beirut than they should be looking to Bombay. Bombay and Calcata, right? So I get that reasoning. What you said during the Burmese episode, and if anyone hasn't heard that yet, I urge you to go back. It is mind-blowingly interesting. The separation, and you likened it to sort of Brexit when you're separated from the mothership, if you like, you know, the bigger economy. It sort of is a prelude to economic disaster. Is the same true for Aden, which is separated on the same day, or are there more myths to catch it? I think there's less because its economy was always less tied to India, I think, than Burma that literally shares a massive land border. And Aden really has its heyday in the 60s, actually, after decades later. Throughout much of this time, it's essentially a point where if you're taking a boat from London to Bombay, you stop off at Aden on the way to refuel. That's how most people experienced it. Even in war rights about it, doesn't it, in one of his travel books arriving at that time? Exactly, in that moment. Exactly, and actually, even in war is a fascinating source on all this, because he writes about the growing dispute, the sense amongst Arabs in the city that they're never going to get as good loans as Indians from the Indian national banks. But, crucially, what's bizarre is that the Arabian Peninsula is separated from the Raj in bits and pieces. So you get Aden separated on April, fullstay, 1937. But the Gulf states remain like Dubai, remains a part of the Indian Empire until much later, until basically early 1947. So just as Indian independence is looming, you get all these conversations about, well, we should quickly separate them off now before, you know, we hand over the reins to the Gulf. And so there's all these bizarre telegrams that I managed to find in the archives. There's British officials discussed whether India or Pakistan would be allowed to run the Persian Gulf after independence. Yet a member of the British legation in Tehran writes of his surprise at the apparent unanimity of officials in Delhi that the Persian Gulf was of little interest to the government of India. So the Indians are actually offered the Gulf and turn it down. And as the Gulf resident William Hayu puts it, it would clearly have been inappropriate to hand over responsibility for dealing with the Gulf Arabs to Indians or Pakistanis. There is very, very almost a world in which the entire United Oil wealth of the Gulf is handed over to either India or Pakistan. And it would have changed global geopolitics entirely. And it's one of the most consequential decisions in a set. Imagine Pakistan as an oil state or India as an oil state, just extraordinary. Oil hasn't really been discovered yet. And it wouldn't have just been an oil state. It would have had, you know, think of what Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain each have and put it all together. And I wonder if the decision taken by India, no thanks but no thanks. Thanks very much. Nice to be to think of this, but no, we don't want it. Is informed by, you know, the fact that there are growing fishes within the independence movement as well between the Indian Congress and groups like the Kilafat movement, you know, who identify themselves as being primarily Muslim. And there is this sort of like building picture in India itself in the 1930s and early 40s of we can't have any more tipping the balance out of our favour. To answer your question Anita, I think that it's much more the fact that the Indian government just sees this as a money drain. Oil hasn't really been discovered. And these are tiny villages on the other side of the Arabian Sea that, you know, they will have to fund a huge navy to protect. One of the reasons that all of these states were never brought into modern Saudi Arabia when Ibn Saud unifies all the Arabian tribes in the in the 1920s is because they were under the protection of the Indian army. And the question was, do they really want to have to continue funding the protection of these small villages that were a crucial link in the Indian empire? But, you know, how relevant are they really to Indians today? That's so brilliant. So they just said they can't afford to look after Dubai and Qatar because it's such a drain. Isn't it reminiscent of when the Russians sold back that the West Coast of the United States before the gold was found in the gold rush? Dole just before. And the last girl before the oil? Well, let's take a break here at another dole moment where India said no thanks, thanks but no thanks, we don't want these bits. You can keep them before oil is discovered. Join us after the break where we introduce you to a really fascinating man. His name is David Holden and only this year, has he been exposed as a CIA KGB double-aid See you in a moment. Welcome back. Okay, well that was a teaser and a half before we went into the break. Sam, do Ripple tell us all about this man, David Holden. So David Holden's a really fascinating figure. He shows up in my book because his writings as correspondent for various newspapers in the 1950s across the Arabian Peninsula is one of the best visualizations for the lingering Indian influence across the region. He writes amazingly about the fact that he had looked forward to his Arabian posting but he hadn't been expecting to be attending a garden der bar in honor of Queen Victoria's appointment as Empress of India in the 1950s, kind of Bahrain. And he writes that the Raj maintains here a slightly phantasmal sway, a situation rich and anomaly in anachronism. The servants are all bearers, the laundryman Adobe, and the watchman a chalky though. And on Sundays the guests are confronted with the ancient and agreeable Anglo-Indian ritual of a mountainous curry lump. So he writes gorgeously about the lingering impact of the Raj on this region. But as you said, what's extraordinary is that he has entered the news this year as one of the big double agents of the Cold War. Working for the KGB against the CIA. Well, working for kind of both. Yes. His former editor at the Sunday Times remembers him as a small neat man, not a hair out of place, who with his bus jacket and debonair manner managed to bring a touch of bow-jess to our newsroom hub hub. He was generous in providing contacts and very well aware of the dangers of practicing journalism in tense exotic places. And if you look at a photo of him, he's a kind of smug and confident young man in a cotton suit with combed black hair and a sort of penetrating gaze. He looks like he works at the tax office and he's just landed me with an enormous bill and he's very happy with it. That's what he looks like. That's exactly what he looks like. Some kind of administrator who's got the cream. But yeah, so what is he doing at this time? And how is he sort of playing both sides off each other? One of the great mysteries of the Sunday Times' history that the editor Harold Evans spent years trying to solve and never managed to solve was why was Holden mysteriously murdered in Cairo. And he's found, I think, in a parking lot or something. Is his body just found kind of dumped on the side of the road? When is the murder? Body's found in 1977. So just six years after my book ends. And yeah, it's one of the great mysteries of the Sunday Times' history. And there was all sorts of stuff coming out when I was researching the book about his mysterious meetings with a known Soviet block agent. And it was recently discovered just in the last year of my research that he'd had a passionate romantic affair with ex-communist and spy Leo Silberman, who turns out later to have been a KGB recruiter. There's a letter that he writes to his brother that in such a conservative environment as Arabia, what is a fellow to do except turn queer? So news investigations recently have concluded that his relationship with Leo Silberman eventually evolved into him working for the KGB himself and that he was working for the CIA at the same time and that it was one of the big scandals basically of the Sunday Times' history. But what the hell is he doing in the Gulf States? I mean, what do they-- well, do they both want him? I mean, why is he working for them? Who is he therefore? And is he doing this for money or is he a communist? I mean, his description of the absurdity of British rituals in the Gulf would indicate that he's a lefty sort of laughing at the pompous Brits, which would imply a more go left leaning politics. He's definitely that. I think that it's still unclear what's going on. I think that he is covering the whole of this region, including Egypt after the Suez crisis, he's covering Israel Palestine. There's all sorts of major politics blowing up at the time that he's basically just being sent out by the Sunday Times to cover. But obviously, there's all sorts of murky dealings in terms of the US versus the USSR throughout this region at exactly the same time. And I think this is such a new story that it's still unclear precisely what he was doing when. But I think as more research has done, it'll become clearer. And this will soon be regarded as one of the great kind of kin-fil-be stories of the Cold War. It's just an extraordinary thing, an extraordinary thing. I mean, we did mention just before the break that India had said no thank you to all of these Gulf days because oil had not been discovered. I mean, at what point is oil discovered where India can really kick itself in the shin and Pakistan can as well by saying no thank you to this great gift? And when holding is there, is it the start of money starting to pour in, pour out of this region? Precisely. So there was oil discovered in the region shortly before separation and before the partition of Arabia from India. But it was discovered in small quantities. The thing that changes everything is when Iran tries to nationalise the Anglo-Persian oil company in the early 50s. Which I think I'm reddening saying is part of Burmiroil, which we discussed in the last episode. It's a subsidiary. It's a subsidiary, that's right. So you've got these kind of funny connections. And crucially, this bit of Iran where oil is, Muhammad was very almost recognised as a independent princely state of the Raj. And the Brits try to get the local shake to basically declare independence of Iran and be recognised alongside Kuwait and Qatar, etc. As a princely ruler. But when holdings arriving, it's just beginning. You're just suddenly getting this new investment in all the oil reserves of Bahrain. And I think Abu Dhabi has just discovered some, but it's not yet discovered in places like Dubai. And when he's going around, he's shocked. The crucial thing that he's seeing everywhere is this lingering Indian influence. He's finding that the soldiers of Qaeda, he's state in what's now Eastern Yemen, were marching around in defunct Hyderabad army uniforms. Because the Sultan was actually a relation of the Nizam of Hyderabad in Central India. One of the figures you bring into your account at this point are the Ambani family who Indians will know as the richest people in India. One of the richest people in the world now. What's there part of the story? So again, there are just eyewitnesses to all of this. This is a time when Indian influence is still rife across the region and there's still a memory. It's essentially viewed as the last vestige of the Indian Empire. Having been separated off now that India, Pakistan and Burma are independent. There's one scholar, Paul Rich, who talks about the Gulf essentially being the Indian Empire's last redout, just as Goa was Portuguese India's last solitary vestige. Or Pondicherry was the tag end of French India. And the Ambani's, along with hundreds of thousands of other Indian trading families, continued to play trade between Gujarat, Maharashtra, Siddharth. And the Gulf states just as they always had. To this day in Bombay, you see people selling sort of Arabian cans of cola and odd jobs on the seafront in Mumbai, on Apollo, Banda and a marine drive. There's still Arab selling things there, but coming in on Dows to this day. Precisely. And Ambani, Deribai Ambani, whose son Mukesh is now one of the richest men in the world with one of India's biggest businesses. Is one of the Indians who's going out there to continue to making a fortune there. You know, like Aidan is increasingly in the 50s, you know, one of the British Empire's last great shipping centers. Aidan is what Dubai will later become. It's the big business center of the Arabian Peninsula. And Ambani goes there to basically work for a Neural Company. A lot of the eulogies of his life of this rags to Rich's story, like to talk about him as a petrol pump owner. He's actually going to basically organizing one of the biggest, you know, refueling massive ships to the, you know, like huge cruise ships twice the size of the Titanic. You know, he's organizing this massive sort of refueling station. Is he rich? Is he rich by Aidan standards at this point? No, but he's part of this growing middle class that's able to take get a job in this booming city and go home relatively rich enough to start his own big business, which will be called Reliance. One of the big businesses of India today, crucially his wife, Cook LeBenne, has an amazing memoir and she writes very explicitly about the disappearance of this Indian world of the region, the fact that when they arrive, they arrive in Aidan and within a day they've met kind of six relatives who are living there. And that Gujarat is still so tied to Aidan that everyone is Gujarat. They didn't have to speak a word of Arabic to live there in what's now Yemen. Yet by the late 1950s, they leave because of growing Arab nationalism and a growing campaign that Indians don't belong. So tell us about this, this growth of Arab nationalism. This is the era of NASA. Everyone's looking to this sort of new leader who's uniting the Arabs against the West. How does it affect people like the Ambani's and the remaining Indians in the Gulf? So there's slogans like Arabia for the Arabs. And as far as Arab nationalist rhetoric goes, a lot of the Indians and Pakistanis now working in Aidan are essentially collaborators with British imperialists. And in quick succession in the mid 1950s, citizenship of the Gulf States is tied to a fair knowledge of Arabic and to basically being Arab. I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects when you're looking from the long distance back at the Raj. Today, many of us write about the Raj as something exploitative and which looted and robbed India. And I've spent a lot of my working life sort of working on that theme. But one of the plus points of the Raj, which is often not understood. in modern India is that the Raj because of its share size and because of its links to other British colonies like like the ones in East Africa allowed Indians who were entrepreneurial like the Chettias going to Burma like the Gujarati is going to Aden like all the Ismailis going to East Africa. It allows amazing business opportunities for entrepreneurial Indians to set up their businesses around the outskirts on the periphery of British India which leads to these vast Gujarati communities in East Africa or Punjabi communities in East Africa and the Chettias. And in 1947 when those links are cut those communities are cut off so that the East African Gujaratis end up in Britain the Chettias have to return back to Tamil Nadu, Go to Singapore and the Aden Indians come back to Bombay. I mean maybe there's another parallel to be drawn that as Sam was saying you know you've got Ma Ambani who in her memoir talks about bumping into six people she's related to on the first day of being there. The Indians were clannish wherever they went and so you know just like you have in East Africa the complaints from you know the indigenous people of Kenya and Uganda that you know they're sort of living amongst us but not of us that there is I mean I do get that sense that you know even in Aden where you've got this Gujarati population or you've got you know the the the others in places that William just mentioned that there is not a cultural meld that has gone on but you get little Indians in these places which fuels that Arab nationalism. And crucially in the 1950s it's after the Suez crisis British imperialism is kind of dying out and there's increasing protest for you know independence for everywhere in the British Empire at this point. And so Britain begins as a point of policy to try and transform this region into viable states that it can hand over independence to but who will remain kind of friendly with the British so that they continue to have British businesses operating there who they can hand power over to. And the first they give independence to is Kuwait 1961 Kuwait is granted independence the protectorate over Kuwait is removed and yet almost immediately the Iraqi government begins referring to Kuwait as a lost province of Iraq whose independence from Iraq was only an artificial creation of the sort of viceroys of India essentially and it was only thanks to the Indian army's protection that it was independent of Iraq that's an argument that's used almost immediately and one that will be used by Saddam Hussein three decades later to justify his invasion of Kuwait and so you get the origins of the Gulf War. How amazing Sam you have your character David Holden turning up at this point and pointing out the irony that while Kuwait was one of Britain's dependent shakedams no significant British land force had ever been summoned to its defense. Now in the first month of its independence nearly 6000 British troops pour into the country to defend it against Iraqi ambitions. Exactly Sam there's an absolutely fascinating eye opening account of Kuwait being granted independence what happens to the rest? So there's an increasing push to try and federate basically all of these little shakedams that exist across the Arabian Raj as it's called and so for example you get the first inklings of the United Arab Emirates trying to federate states like Abu Dhabi and Dubai together. At the same time as you have an attempt to try and federate all the states that will later become Yemen basically so states like Lahid and Guaidi state in the course of the 1960s you have increasing protests and then revolution to try and push Britain out of the region so it goes from being something that the Brits are going to pursuing sort of to something that revolutionaries are shooting Brits in the streets of Aden and saying go away and you know Aden which was one of the great port cities of the British Empire becomes the center of a massive battle between rival revolutionary groups who are all pushing for Britain to get the hell out. Things are calmer though elsewhere so whilst it's eventually a group called the NLF who's essentially communists take over South Yemen and create a country called South Yemen but it's not you know it's not allies who Britain is able to hand over power to it's a group called the national liberation front who is very much pro-USSR etc. In the rest of the Gulf states they are able to hand over power to the loyal shakes and sultans and David Holden writes in July 1971 that for the first time since the heyday of Britain's East India company all the territories around the Gulf will be at liberty to seek their own salvation without the threat of British intervention or the comfort of British protection. This final remnant of the British Raj for that in effect is what it is has been for some years now an obvious if somewhat charming anachronism but its day is over. He writes that you know Arabia's changed extraordinarily in the intervening years between kind of you know 1950s when he first arrives in 1970s when he leaves and when he arrived it was one of the poorest regions of the world but now Abu Dhabi I think by the time he leaves was per capita the richest state bar none even though just 10 years earlier it was sunk in the traditional penury of desert isolation and he says that shake zayed of Abu Dhabi's forefathers ruled the desert from the back of a camel but zayed rides it in a limousine so it's it's changed in extraordinary ways but in July 1971 a new union called the united Arab Emirates is formed out of small shake them such as Abu Dhabi Dubai, Ajman, Fajira, Calba, Um al-Qa'in and later Ras al-Qa'ima joins it as a seventh shake them and so you get the origin of the UAE out of the small remnants of the British Raj and finally in December 1971 the final British ships pull out of the port of Bahrain and leave and the protectorate that had been placed over the region is finally taken away so that the Gulf states emerge in 71 the same week as an independent Bangladesh will which is what we'll discuss in a few episodes time they are finally recognized as independent nation states rather than just as British protectors. Sam this whole idea of founding a confederation of what had been princely states creates one of the great what ifs of history what if john poor jype or hydroband cashmere and so on and founded an Indian federation would we would we see them today as a sort of UAE living alongside India yes and there's a lot of talk about that I think in episode four of this mini series we'll be discussing exactly that possibility so do stay around and listen in to that episode. Look at you doing your plugs for us that's so amazing honestly I don't know I'm working with him you're very good seriously you always forget to plug ahead um listen you could just got a little taste of what is to come these stories and so many more are contained within shattered lands five partitions and they're making of modern Asia by sam de rinpoor if you want to hear the next episode we're going to be exploring the partition that you know most of us think about when we talk about partition and that is the partition of India and Pakistan but from a slightly different angle because I know we have covered partition on this podcast before because we're going to be focusing on the creation of eastern Pakistan now Bangladesh so I mean it's going to inform a lot of what's going on in the world at the moment if you can't wait you don't have to you can listen to it straight away just become a member of the Empire Club that's empire poduk.com empire poduk.com I always say this a price of a fancy coffee per month that's all it is and you get early access to you know our mini series all in one go listen out your convenience weekly newsletters which are brilliant and stuff full of extra information and reading suggestions well it's become part of our team and you're sick at our love our love forever because you becoming a member of a club let's just do what we do and we're very very grateful for those of you sign up. Keeps the whole pod going. So it's empire poduk.com Keeps the wheels on keeps the wheels on it does anyway till the next time we meet it is goodbye from me Anita Arnan and goodbye from me William Grimple.