Britain's informal Empire in the Gulf, 1820-1971. pp. 29 - 45.

What was the nature of Britain's interests in the Gulf Arab states before their independence from Britain, and how did Britain protect those interests. These are questions that historians of the Middle East have examined at length, but this examination has taken place completely outside of a wider debate about British imperialism that occupied historian of Africa, India, Latin America, and China. Historians of the Middle East, and the Gulf in particulier, have largely overlooked the theories about the nature of imperialism that these other historians have developed. Peter Sluglett suggests one explanation for this. Middle East historians, he points out, "see themselves primarily as such rather that as historians of part of the British Empire". Nevertheless, Middle East historians could gain nex insights from a consideration of the contemporary debate in imperial Historiography. What follows is an attemp to link Gulf history with that debate.