By Robin Alexander Plant [Edited by Henry James Long and Seren Caglar]
Throughout the nineteenth century British imperial policy met numerous challenges to their dominance of trade. Both piracy and Wahhabism were at the forefront of this challenge. They were both viewed as a threat to empire and to British dominance in spaces of strategic importance for global trade. In the Persian Gulf, nearly all maritime conflict involving Sunni Arabs was categorised as piratical and inspired by so named Wahhabism from Central Arabia. The term ‘Wahhabi’ was used in a similar manner in India as well, thus clarifying its usage a wider British colonial context. To understand the relationship between Wahhabism and British imperial policy, it is pivotal to grasp how Wahhabi-inspired indiscriminate violence was often the product of British imperial imagination. This allowed Wahhabis to be branded as the terrifying ‘other’ as Britain looked to consolidate its imperial dominance.[i] Moreover, groups categorised as Wahhabi were often also labelled as pirates, thus placing them further outside of the liberal conception of universal rights.[ii]
Scholarship has often been misguided by the official British records resulting in the categorisation of maritime violence as ‘Qawaim piracy’ inspired by the concept of fanatical Wahhabism.[iii] To begin, there will be a discussion of the history of the Salafi (Wahhabi) movement. Next, an overview of contemporary and historiographical explanations of the increased conflict that emerged in the Gulf Region in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Then, a sketch of the temporal dimensions of the region prior to the conflicts involving British ships. Next, an inquiry into British imperial motivations in the region, and finally an explanation of the ‘Phantom Wahhabi’ as a trope of British imperialism and how it connects to their aims of political hegemony in the nineteenth century. The aim of this piece is therefore to emphasise that conventional historical explanations of ‘piratical’ Arab groups supposedly motivated by fanatical Wahhabism is an invention of British imperial discourse and is not an adequate explanation of the rise of maritime conflict in the nineteenth century.
Salafism and its belief system encompass a wide variety of positions relating to politics and violence. As a result, adherents are varied in their ideological stances.[iv] Equally contested is the literature on what the belief system entails. Here, focus will predominantly be on how opponents have viewed Salafism, or as they term it, ‘Wahhabism’.[v] Although being diverse and fractionalised in belief, there are common denominators in Salafism; a puritanical approach to religion, a strict adherence to tawhid (a oneness with God), and rejection of ‘human reason, logic, and desire.’[vi] The movements’ foundational theories are those of Muhammad Ibn Abdul-Wahhab (1702-1792), who opposed the combination of ‘polytheism, superstitions and sanctification of saints and graves.’ As well as an adherence to tawhid, he promoted the ‘following of Sunnah’ (way) of Allah.[vii] When placed in his contemporary time, his goal was a purification of the unauthentic elements of the contemporary Islam he witnessed.[viii] The movement originally developed in the province of Najd, Central Arabia; an important zone of cultural exchange, as well as a historically autonomous region.
Wahhabism was born from a context of local warfare, rather than foreign conquests, exemplified by the fact it remained independent when Arabia was claimed by the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, its foundation was not a response to European colonialism but to the ‘perceived deterioration in Muslim beliefs and practices’ through ‘grassroots conversion and reform through top-down governance.’[ix] This is important because it challenges the perception of the movement as fanatical religious insurgence against European occupation of the Gulf that needed to quelled by British law and order. Previous scholars failed to grasp that Arabia and the Gulf were culturally and politically contested spaces before European arrival. Leading them to categorise the relationship between British Imperialism and Wahhabism as one of law and order imposed by British rulers, put in place to quell the religiously inspired ‘piracy’ of regional actors.[x]
Scholars attempting to explain attacks on European shipping in the Persian Gulf region have often repeated simplistic nineteenth century explanations. They have asserted that the Qawaism of Ras al-Khayma (modern day United Arab Emirates) was responsible for the indiscriminate piracy witnessed.[xi] For instance, Sir Arnold Wilson has argued that Arabic control led to the ‘dominance of piracy’, adding that Wahhabi emissaries were responsible for promoting pillage and outrage from Central Arabia.[xii] This conclusion demonstrates a failure to understand the different systems of law that existed, Arab expansion, the regional specialisation in maritime technology, control of pearl fisheries, shared linage, and armed superiority enabled them to act in coercive manner, and use sectarian distinctions in Islam for political purposes.[xiii] The lack of understanding about the temporal dimensions of the Gulf Region was key in the definition of maritime violence (carried out by predominantly Salafi Muslims) as ‘fanatical Wahhabism’ and ‘piracy’. In fact, it was the ending of Persian dominance in the Gulf, as well as British and Dutch abandonment of their trading posts at Gombroon in the mid to late eighteenth century that led to the intensification of conflict between Sunni Arab maritime ‘warriors and coastal inhabitants’.[xiv]
Prior to this, Britain did not consider the Arabs to have any ‘forces of consequence’. At the end of the nineteenth century, maritime Arabs began to increase the size of their ships, fleets and alliances, as long as they were given the time to do so. Most notable of these was the Utub alliance of modern-day Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Jowasim lineage.[xv] It was therefore the lack of imperial dominance of pearl fisheries, markets and shipping lanes that allowed the Arab groups to ‘expand and consolidate’ their polities. Once coming into contact with the Anglo-Indian system (although not acknowledged by Arabian lineages) they were forced to return to their localised structures. Importantly, it would be incorrect to remember these chiefs and powerful alliances as pirates. They were an economically specialised and ethnically distinct coastal population who had a long history of regionally specific conflict that followed rules of engagement that was generations old.[xvi] Therefore, previous explanations of maritime conflict between the Arabs and the British that emphasise an ‘Arab dependency on piracy’ and influence from reactionary fanatical militants inspired by Wahhabism falls very far from the mark. It ignores lineages or localised structures that have a rich history of maritime living, exploration, trading and raiding. Rather, it serves the purpose of propagating a myth that serves the interest of British imperial aims, tied to their rhetoric of universal trade and stewarded by British law and order.
Prior to Britain’s involvement in the Gulf, the East India Trading Company (EIC) represented British commercial and political interests in the Gulf. Over time, the EIC’s power grew, and the role of residents and agents became further politicised.[xvii] At the beginning of the nineteenth century however, the Persian Gulf was at the heart of profound political changes that saw a new style of European imperialism and trade emerge.[xviii] Throughout the century Britain began to impose a hegemonic control of the international system of trade. Not through direct control, but instead becoming the ‘steward’ of the oceans.[xix] The Gulf was seen as essential due to its strategic importance in the protection of India from north-western approaches and their booming sea-born commerce. This was perceived by the British as being under threat from Qawasi piracy, supposedly fuelled by Wahhabism.[xx] Scholars note that the factors that motivated British imperialism were dominated by two main theories. Firstly, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher assert that the strategic defence of India was the ‘primary motive’ for imperial policy. In this sense, the trade of Britain followed the flag.[xxi] They argue that Britain’s desire for direct control can be summarised as ‘informal control if possible, formal control if necessary’. Therefore, they conclude, it is the periphery rather than imperial capital of London that explains the nature of British imperial policy.[xxii] P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins assert that British imperial policy was motivated by the interests of the City of London’s finance and service sectors, to protect markets against rivals, or simply that the imperial flag followed already-occurring trade routes.[xxiii] There is consensus between the two in regard to the British desire for informal control, but eventual reliance on formal control if deemed necessary.
In James Onley’s analysis, he concludes that Britain introduced economic policy with a political motive.[xxiv] This is an unusual take, as the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf, and its strategic location in regard to British rule in Bombay make it essential for global shipping routes and essential to Britain’s desire to become the steward of the sea. Therefore, despite Britain’s interest being limited to the pearl trade, it was global economic interests that motivated imperial policy.[xxv] Moreover, the political motivations of the British state were invariably tied up with the economic interests of the financial sector of the City of London.[xxvi] The nineteenth century saw empire become defined by free trade within a new evolving international judicial order which enforced British interests to maintain their expanding world market, which was in turn enforced by their superior naval power.[xxvii] It is still necessary to explain how the British combined hysteria around the pirate Wahhabi naval power and a rhetoric of global free trade and to remove challengers to maritime hegemony.
Britain’s definition of those considered pirates or Wahhabi was a crucial tool, and meant that Britain was able to assert control over the Gulf, and more broadly those who challenged British rule. As L.E. Sweet demonstrated, Britain was not entering into a geo-political vacuum as they increased their presence in the Gulf region. Instead, it was a multi-dimensional field of particular socio-cultural systems.[xxviii] For example, the Jowasim lineage and Muscat ships were traditionally at war, and raids were only carried out against Arab polities with whom there was a recognised state of war.[xxix] This Jowasim alliance was the target of devastating attacks by the British in 1808 and 1818.[xxx] It was by defining these attacks as piracy and plunder that Britain was able to justify their response to the raids.[xxxi] In reality, Jowasim piracy was well organised, it had a traditional depth and pattern and was not dependent upon stimulus from Wahhabi expansion from central Arabia.[xxxii] Therefore, once military dominance was achieved Britain was able to introduce the General Treaty of 1820. In doing so, Britain began the process of achieving political and economic hegemony in the Gulf. They justified their use of violence through categorising the maritime violence of those Arab lineages that posed too great a threat to Britain’s global trade as piracy and plunder.[xxxiii]
Not all signatories were judged as pirates, however, and some were allied to the British; a reflection of British desire for non-coercive but more informal control when possible.[xxxiv] It did include, however, a differentiation of friendly and non-friendly Arab ships, an example of Britain acting as maritime adjudicator.[xxxv] By 1835 Pax Britanniahad been established over the Gulf with the introduction of maritime truces. Hereafter, the Perpetual Maritime Truce (1853) which established the Trucial Coast (in which regional powers relinquished their right to war) in return for British protection. As a result, Britain was now the ‘protector, mediator, arbiter and guarantor of settlements.’[xxxvi] They had achieved this through a careful combination of formal and informal rule. Forming alliances with polities when needed, and defining those who challenged them as pirates, motivated by Wahhabi Chiefs from Central Arabia. This fear of the Wahhabi insurgency is repeated in other contexts of British imperial rule outside of the context of local piracy, but it further illuminates the tension in British imperial policy between a universalist rhetoric of trade, rights and encounters with those deemed outside the law.
British imperial policy and imagination reproduces the trope of the Phantom Wahhabi in different locations and times. As previous historians have emphasised, British policy decisions in the Gulf and Indian sub-continent were interconnected. It is, therefore, not shocking that the 1860s and 1870s saw British colonial government supress an imagined Wahhabi conspiracy.[xxxvii] Their justification for suppression followed a similar rhetoric to their response to the supposedly Wahhabi inspired pirates of the Gulf, the same rhetoric reproduced by British historians, notably Sir Arnold Wilson and J.F. Standish. Although there are general similarities with Arabian adherents to Abdul Wahhab, Indian reformers had deep roots in South Asian Islam and therefore connected more with Sufi practices. This reproduction of the Wahhabi indicates that imperial and colonial imagination must categorise those challenging rule as a part of the vanguard of a plot to bring down the empire.[xxxviii]
Despite having an exceptionally weak case, justification was found by asserting that those involved in the ‘Great Wahhabi Case’ were anti-colonial rebels inspired by fanatical religious beliefs.[xxxix] This case demonstrates the construction of the Phantom Wahhabi, as it established the right of government to suspend habeas corpus in India.[xl] Further, it serves as a useful tool for understanding the construction of the Wahhabi inspired pirate in conventional histories maritime conflict in the Persian Gulf. In the wider context of British imperial policy both defining someone as a pirate or Wahhabi reflects the contest between authoritarian and liberal strands of imperial ideology.[xli] It does so through the justification of protecting global free trade and universal rights. To put it another way, these multiple lives of the Phantom Wahhabi are born out of a complex interaction of colonial ideologies of universalism and difference.[xlii] Imperial and colonial policy decision were therefore motivated by Adam Smith’s theories of universal trade. In the context of the Gulf, however, when these theories collided with ships ‘not manned by Christian crews not owned by British, but by Hindus and other unbelievers’ was categorised as piracy motivated by Wahhabi expansion.[xliii]
This essay has looked to clarify the debate surrounding the relationship of Wahhabism and British imperial policy. Firstly, that the origins of Salafism (termed Wahhabi by opponents) is not an ideology founded in opposition to foreign powers. Rather, it is a politically conservative and religiously puritanical ideology, founded in response to changes in Islamic practice of worship. Secondly, that previous historians’ definition of Arab maritime activity as piracy motivated by fanatical Wahhabism is rooted in a poor understanding of Salafism and the temporal dimensions of the Persian Gulf, as it is clear that Sunni Arab seafaring lineages were similar to the Bedouin desert camel tribes.[xliv] Thirdly, the profound changes that British imperial activity was undergoing in the nineteenth century are pivotal to understanding the use of the terms piracy and Wahhabi in British discourse. These developments meant that imperial motivation was primarily concerned with maintaining strategic trade routes and ensuring Britain was the adjudicator in maritime conflict. Moreover, these motivations were underpinned by a desire to protect India and the interests of the City of London. The relationship between imperial policy and Wahhabism is therefore one that reflects wider concerns about maintaining global trade in favour of British interests. To conclude, the discourse that surrounds Wahhabism and piracy is intimately tied up with wider tensions between authoritarian and liberal strands of imperial ideology.[xlv]
Notes:
[i] For greater discussion and foundational text on othering see Edward W. Saïd, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003). [ii] See Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim fanatic in mid-Victorian India”, Modern Asian Studies, 47/1 (2013), pp. 22-52; Amedo Policante, The Pirate Myth: Genealogies of an Imperial Concept (New York: Routledge, 2015); Sujit Sivasundaram, “Closed Sea or Contested Waters? The Persian Gulf in the Age of Revolution”, in Kate Fullagar and Michael A. McDonnell (eds.), Facing Empire – Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2018). For a recent example of this see, Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 29/3 (2005), pp. 207-239. [iii] Patricia Risso, “Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region during the Long Eighteenth Century”, Journal of World History, 2 (2001), p. 295. For an example of this misguide approach see J. F. Standish, “British Maritime Policy in the Persian Gulf” Middle Eastern Studies, 3/4 (1967), pp. 332-354. [iv] Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement”, p. 207. [v] For a detailed discussion of ‘Wahhabism’ see Haneef James Oliver, The ‘Wahhabi’ Myth: Dispelling Prevalent Fallacies and the Fictitious Link With Bin Laden (Indiana: Trafford Publishing, 2002); Natana J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). [vi] Wiktorowicz, “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement”, pp. 207-208. [vii] Oliver, The ‘Wahhabi’ Myth, p. 4. [viii] Oliver, The ‘Wahhabi’ Myth, p. 4. [ix] Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam, p. 7. [x] The image of violent and destructive Wahhabis, is not a reflection of Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who emphasised the preservation of life, human, plant and animal, and property. Jihad is carefully discussed and pitched as a last resort; Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam, p. 224-225. [xi] Arab historians attempted to challenge this in 1980s, asserting that what occurred was not piracy, the Qaswasim were not the aggressor and that a legend of Qasimi piracy was propagated by Britain to eliminate trade rivals; M.E. Yapp, “The Blood Red Arab Flag: An investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797-1820”, in Charles E. Davis, “Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies”, University of London, 61/3 (1988) pp. 543-544. [xii] L. E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities? Arab Societies of the Persian or Arabian Gulf, 18th Century”, Ethnohistory, 11/3 (1964) p. 264. [xiii] L. E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 264. [xiv] L. E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 267. [xv] L. E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 267. [xvi] L. E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, pp. 269-270. [xvii] James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 43-44. [xviii] Sivasundaram, “Closed Sea or Contested Waters?”, p. 115. [xix] Policante, The Pirate Myth, p. 129. [xx] J.B. Kelly, “The British Position in the Persian Gulf”, The World Today, 20/6 (1964), p. 238. [xxi] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 29. [xxii] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 30. [xxiii] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 30. [xxiv] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 31. [xxv] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 33. [xxvi] For the role of the City of London in expansion and consolidation of the British empire in last two decades of the nineteenth century see Steven Reginald Burdett Smith, British Nationalism, Imperialism and the City of London 1880-1900, Queen Mary, University of London (1985). [xxvii] Policante, The Pirate Myth, p. 131. [xxviii] L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 262. [xxix] L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 274. [xxx] L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 271. [xxxi] General Treaty for the Cessation of Plunder and Piracy by Land and Sea (1820). [xxxii] A Comparison to the Bedouin tribes who would carry out raids riding camels in the desert L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 276. [xxxiii] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 44. [xxxiv] General Treaty. [xxxv] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, p. 44. [xxxvi] Onley, The Arabian Frontier, pp. 46-47. [xxxvii] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, p. 22. [xxxviii] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, pp. 23-26. [xxxix] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, pp. 23-26. [xl] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, pp. 24-25. [xli] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, p. 22. [xlii] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, p. 52. [xliii] L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, pp. 275-276. [xliv] L.E. Sweet, “Pirates or Polities?”, p. 276. [xlv] Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi”, p. 22.
Bibliography
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