The flames that forged a nation

This year is the 200th anniversary of the first of two attacks by the British on Ras al Khaimah to protect its ships from so-called piracy.

Written in Basra while he was recovering from his wounds, Captain R Babcock's account of the events in the Gulf on December 1, 1804, typifies the British reputation for maintaining a stiff upper lip.
"Sir," he begins, in a letter to Samuel Manesty, the East India Company's Resident at Basra, then the base of British operations in the Gulf, "it is with regret I address you on this occasion stating the melancholy circumstance that occurred on board the brig Shannon". The "melancholy circumstance" was that off the island of Farur, south of the Iranian coast, the East India Company ship had been overhauled by a fleet of 15 dhows and, after an hour or so of an uneven artillery duel, had been boarded by Arab warriors, "sword-in-hand, taking possession of the vessel and treating myself and crew most severely".
That was something of an understatement. "We had one man killed and four badly wounded," Babcock continued, adding, almost as an afterthought, "besides myself being most cruelly treated, they having cut off my left hand by the wrist and wounded me in nine other places about the head and body". Quite who was to blame for this episode and others like it remains a matter of dispute among modern historians. For decades the accepted "truth" was that in the 18th and 19th century the mouth of the Gulf was in the grip of the warlike Qawasim, skilled mariners whose "occupation is piracy and their delight murder", in the words of one contemporary British account.
In 1989, however, Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the Ruler of Sharjah and a historian who graduated with a PhD in Gulf history from the University of Exeter, published a book that sought to redress the balance of accounts written almost exclusively by British commentators. "The people of the Gulf were normal people with normal human ambitions," Dr Sheikh Sultan wrote in The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf. "The only abnormal factor was the introduction of a foreign people whose aim was to dominate and exploit."
These intruders were the traders and armed forces of the East India Company. They were interested, he said, not in "benevolent ... intervention ... for the sole purpose of preserving law and order", as some historians had maintained, but in protecting their business interests. Then at the height of its power, the company virtually ran India and, for purposes of trade and communication, relied heavily on the sea routes than ran the length of the Gulf. These "forces of British imperialism", wrote Dr Sheikh Sultan, "knew very well and often testified that the indigenous people of the Gulf were only interested in the peaceful pursuits of pearl diving and trading".
There were, undoubtedly, bloody clashes between the British and the seagoing inhabitants of the Gulf in the early years of the 19th century, but in Dr Sheikh Sultan's view the British contrived a "Big Lie", misrepresenting the Qawasim, whom they saw as "the only real opposition to their plans in the Gulf", as pirates and blaming them for any misfortune that befell ships in the area. Other historians argue that the British, essentially trespassers in another state's territorial waters, knew little of the people and their ways, an ignorance that led to political misunderstandings.
"The idea of Qasimi piracy in the Gulf was ... especially unnerving for Europeans, Indians and certain others who sailed these waters precisely because the Qawasim, as a people, were so little known," wrote Charles Davies, another alumnus of Exeter, in his 1997 book The Blood-Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797-1820. As a result, "they acquired a fearsome reputation for fanaticism and wanton cruelty".
Dr James Onley, senior lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, and the author of The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj, says the clash came because the East India Company baulked at paying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. "In Arabia, if you were going by land or sea, you had to pay tolls to the people who controlled that land or patch of sea," he says.
"Try taking your ship through the Suez Canal and not paying the Egyptian government; see what happens. This is what the East India Company was doing in the Strait of Hormuz; they were not paying tolls that in terms of international law the Qawasim were legally entitled to charge." Whatever the rights and wrongs of Arab activity in the Gulf - and this was, after all, their backyard and the British were far from home, pursuing the imperial policy of imposing their will on all and sundry - events in the early 19th century were to have momentous, if unforeseen, consequences.
As it was, the Supreme Government in Calcutta decided that it was time to resort to force. Between July 1807 and May the following year there was a series of incidents, among the more serious of which was the loss of the Sylph, a lightly armed company schooner boarded in October 1808 in the Strait of Hormuz. When another ship came to her aid, its skipper found that 30 of the crew had been killed. Worse still was the attack on the Minerva on May 23, 1809, an account of which found its way into the Bombay Gazette.
According to survivors, the ship had been attacked by a fleet of more than 50 dhows, 16 of which were lost in an action that lasted for almost two days. In the end, the attackers boarded her, killing 45 of the 77 on board. This was stirring stuff, and certain to stir British imagination and indignation, but it was not the last straw: the decision to attack Ras al Khaimah had already been taken by the Supreme Government in Calcutta on April 3.
A British expeditionary force of 16 ships and more than 1,300 troops arrived on November 11, 1809. Its job was to deliver an abject lesson in the futility of interfering with British interests and, over a month and a half, it destroyed more than 100 vessels in Qasimi ports including Ras al Khaimah. There, a British officer noted grudgingly, the defenders, though "brave and skilful in single combat ... were unable to withstand the shock of adversaries acting in a body".
Nevertheless, the first attack did not seem to do the trick. Ten years later, just before Christmas 1819, the British returned to reinforce the message, and this time the destruction was even more widespread. Twice as many ships were destroyed - mainly at Ras al Khaimah and Sharjah - and the British landed naval guns and the men of His Majesty's 65th Regiment of Foot. The action ended with the siege of 400 Arab defenders in the fort at Dhaya, just north of Ras al Khaimah. The British offered safe conduct for the women and children; by one account the sheikh in charge replied: "We are enduring all this, taking our stand on nothing but our religion, and preferring the death of the faithful to the life of the reverse."
Either way, the fort fell after two hours of heavy bombardment. The British officer in charge later noted sniffily: "The service was short but arduous. The enemy defended themselves with an obstinacy and ability worthy of a better cause." Davies records that fortifications all along the coast from Rams to Abu Hail were destroyed; some towns, such as Jazirat al Hamra, lay in ruins and deserted for years. When the British pulled out the following July, in a final act of what was later described as "retributive justice", Ras al Khaimah itself was razed to the ground.
Today, the rights and wrong of the events 200 years ago are little more than academic, but the consequences may have helped to shape a nation. The events of 1797-1820 led directly to the General Treaty of 1820, the precursor to 150 years of British ascendancy in the Gulf and the formation of the Trucial States, which ended with the unification of the emirates in 1971. Without them, concludes Davies, "it is not inconceivable ... that the present-day status of the smaller Gulf states might have been radically different".
In a strange and entirely unexpected way, the UAE could be said to have been forged in the blood and flames of Ras al Khaimah 200 years ago. [e-mail]