DOCSLIB.ORG

William Richard Williamson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
William Richard Williamson William Richard Williamson From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia William Richard ("Haji") Williamson was an English adventurer who became an oil company representative in the Persian Gulf. Contents [hide] 1Early life 2Trade and pearls 3Kuwait o 3.1Appointment to Anglo-Persian o 3.2Relations with Major Frank Holmes 4Qatar and Abu Dhabi 5Retirement and death 6Conspiracy theory 7References 8External links Early life[edit] Williamson’s early life was packed with adventure. Born in Bristol in 1872 and educated at Clifton High School, he left school at the age of 13 to enlist on his uncle’s tea-clipper bound for Australia and the United States. When the vessel docked at San Diego, Williamson jumped ship and found work on a farm near Los Angeles, then with his aunt on her homestead. Intending to prospect for gold, Williamson acquired a mule and shotgun and travelled to the Nevadas where he acquired a mine. When this venture ended in failure, Williamson went to San Francisco and enlisted on a cargo ship bound for Bordeaux. San Francisco Bay c.1889 Following a brief visit to France, Williamson returned to California via the Panama Canal and undertook various activities: investing unsuccessfully in a railway company, taking part in a vaudeville act and trying his luck as an amateur boxer but it was not long before he returned to the sea. Williamson became fourth mate on a whaler which sailed to the Bering Straits returning again to San Francisco after an eight-month voyage. He then enlisted for a trading voyage to the South Seas and settled for a time in the Caroline Islands, trading in sea-cucumbers. But he was arrested for selling rifles to rebel tribesmen and was incarcerated in a Manila jail. After bribing a guard, Williamson escaped to the American consul Alexander Russell Webb and boarded a British ship bound for Hong Kong. He pursued a seafaring career as quartermaster of the SS Chusan. Then, after a brief sojourn in Bombay, he boarded the SS Siam for the British colony of Aden. On his arrival, he joined the Aden Constabulary. Already interested in Islam, he undertook Islamic study in Aden and, after a year had passed, he made his formal shahada, was circumcised and changed his name to Abdullah Fadhil. This did not go down well with the Aden authorities who packed him off to India where Williamson was discharged from the Constabulary.[1] Trade and pearls[edit] Mecca, ca. 1910. Bird's-eye view of Kaaba crowded with pilgrims Williamson’s next incarnation was as a trader of camels and horses in Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait. With the money he acquired from this venture, in 1894 he was able to join the Hajj caravan to Mecca and thus gained the sobriquet “Haji”. Thereafter Williamson traded horses with the British Army in Bombay and imported foreign goods to his home town of Zubair in Iraq. On one occasion, he caused uproar when he appeared in the local suq on a penny-farthing bicycle, never before seen in those parts. Relations with the British were changeable: they suspected him of gun running in the Persian Gulf and yet were happy to use him as a secret agent and spy hunter during World War I. In later years, his trading interests in the Persian Gulf meant that he veered towards legitimacy. The profits of horse-trading allowing him to buy a dhow, he undertook a number of voyages around the Persian Gulf. He regularly met Royal Navy gunboats as they criss-crossed the Persian Gulf in stop and search operations to suppress an illicit trade in rifles, slaves and contraband. Williamson also tried his hand in the pearling business, joining the great pearling fleet in the Persian Gulf. The pearling season known al-Ghaus al-Kabir (“The Big Dive”) ran from May to September when a fleet of some 4,000 dhows ranging from the regular sambuk to the larger boum and baghlah would set out from the many ports of the Persian Gulf. Each carried a master, mate, divers, assistant divers and apprentices drawn from those ports, Oman and beyond. Their purpose was to fish for the most valuable pearls. The venture was not particularly successful and, with a large family to support, a steady job was an attractive proposition.[1] Kuwait[edit] Appointment to Anglo-Persian[edit] In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was struggling to counter Major Frank Holmes' influence in Kuwait. Looking around for a local man to help the company in its dealings with the local Arabs, managing director Sir Arnold Wilson remembered Williamson from his days in Iraq. An Englishman who had “gone native” seemed an obvious choice as interpreter, guide and general factotum, so Wilson sent for Williamson and offered him a job. Williamson had long since adopted the dress and customs of a town Arab. But when doing business with Westerners, he would put on a navy-blue suit with double-breasted jacket while retaining an Arab headdress and toying with his prayer beads, in those days an eccentric fusion of east and west. In 1924, Anglo Persian gave Williamson a family house in Abadan, appointed him “Inspector of Gulf Agencies” and sent him to Kuwait where he set about persuading sheikhly advisers to switch their allegiances from Major Frank Holmes to Anglo Persian. He also assisted the Anglo-Persian representative, Archibald Chisolm, in the negotiations. Williamson was to do what he could to counter Holmes' influence, which including providing the sheikh's advisers with free meals and gifts. But in 1933 Anglo-Persian joined forces with Gulf Oil leaving Williamson out of the negotiations and, in 1935, the two companies concluded a concession agreement from the sheikh.[1] Relations with Major Frank Holmes[edit] Frank Holmes, a New Zealand-British mining engineer who had made his name as an oil concession hunter, was already highly regarded by the Gulf Arabs. Although Holmes and Williamson were cast on opposite sides of the competition in Kuwait (Holmes represented Gulf Oil), they were of a similar ilk, both independent with a strong empathy for the Arab point of view. However, they hated each other with a passion and developed a rivalry which led Williamson (perhaps melodramatically) to believe that his life was in danger, constantly looking over his shoulder for an assassin trailing in his wake. In fact, most of their rivalry was played out in the grand lunches they threw for the notables engaged in the oil negotiations.[1] Qatar and Abu Dhabi[edit] In 1925, Williamson acted as interpreter, guide and general factotum to the Anglo-Persian survey of Qatar led by George Martin Lees. Williamson returned there in 1934 with Anglo-Persian representative Charles Mylles to secure an oil concession from the ruler, Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al-Thani,[2] but negotiations faltered and Mylles had to return in order to complete the agreement on 17 May 1935.[3] Williamson acted in a similar capacity for the first visits of Anglo-Persian geologists to Abu Dhabi in 1934, and was responsible for signing the first oil concession for that country in January 1935. He returned in 1936 to guide another oil survey for Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Limited. “We landed from the Gulf mail steamer at Dubai after a day and night lying to and waiting until one of the most violent storms of thunder and rain we had ever experienced had blown itself out,” wrote one of the geologists. “During the first few months in Dubai we were advised never to leave the house without an armed escort, as we were the first Europeans to live in the town and it was considered desirable to accustom the local populace gradually to our presence.” The party travelled inland with the sheikh and his followers who used each occasion as an excuse for hunting. “With our two cars, we had the sheikh’s and at least one other filled with his men, 6 or 8 to a car, each with his saddle bag of belongings and his rifle. Room had also to be found for cooking pots and one or two hawks, while on one occasion a large saluki (greyhound) was also squeezed in. Our routes followed camel trails, the only tracks of any kind which existed, and as most of the country was sand the cars were very often stuck.”[4] However, there were lingering suspicions among British officials that Williamson was favouring local sheikhs over the interests of the oil company.[5] By 1937, there were still five Gulf sheikhs due to sign oil concession agreements. Frank Holmes at this time was acting for Petroleum Concessions Ltd (PCL), an associate company of the Iraq Petroleum Company, and Williamson (also employed by PCL) began to intrigue against him.[6] Williamson sent a letter – intercepted by the British - to the sheikh of Ras al-Khaimah encouraging him to hold out for better terms from PCL. Williamson also sent a man to the sheikh of Kalba in order to stiffen his resistance against the company. For the British Political Resident, this was the last straw. On 27 July, he wrote that it was “undesirable that Williamson should be employed anywhere on the Arab coast.”[7] So Williamson retired from company life and returned to his family and a quiet life in his house in Zubair. Retirement and death[edit] Williamson had married twice, one of his wives coming from Zubair and the other from Baghdad, and fathered several children. He retired into typical Arab life at Kut-el-Hajjaj near Basra where he supervised daily work on the date palm and orange tree plantations on his estate.[1] As well as enjoying the company of his children and grandchildren, he liked to read penny-Westerns with titles like Two-Gun Pete and Mayhem in Dodge City.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Women Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia: Investigating Strategies Used By
    Lincoln University Digital Thesis Copyright Statement The digital copy of this thesis is protected by the Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand). This thesis may be consulted by you, provided you comply with the provisions of the Act and the following conditions of use: you will use the copy only for the purposes of research or private study you will recognise the author's right to be identified as the author of the thesis and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate you will obtain the author's permission before publishing any material from the thesis. Women Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia: Investigating strategies used by successful Saudi women entrepreneurs A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Management at Lincoln University by Haifa Fallatah Lincoln University 2012 Abstract of a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Business Management. Abstract Women Entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia: Investigating strategies used by successful Saudi women entrepreneurs by Haifa Fallatah Most of the literature on womens’ entrepreneurship relies on quantitative data research. As a result, women entrepreneurs have had limited opportunities to describe their own opinions, experience and their ways of conducting business. Also, there is little research that looks into the business establishment experience of Arab women entrepreneurs in general and Saudi women entrepreneurs in particular. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the situation, this study uses a qualitative approach. Ten Saudi women entrepreneurs were interviewed in order to investigate the factors that drove them to entrepreneurship, the problems they faced during the establishment of their businesses, and the strategies that they employed to overcome those problems.
    [Show full text]
  • Saudi–European Relations 1902–2001: a Pragmatic Quest for Relative Autonomy
    Saudi–European relations 1902–2001: a pragmatic quest for relative autonomy GERD NONNEMAN* Given the historical pedigree and continuing importance of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and Europe, it seems peculiar that relatively little has been written about it, beyond snapshots of certain periods or certain aspects. This article reviews the century-long relationship since 1902, when the construction of the third Saudi state began. An exercise of this kind can be fruitful only if grounded in an understanding of the trends in Saudi foreign policy more generally. Here too, while there has been excellent work on, say, Saudi foreign policy since the 1970s,1 or on the very early period,2 very few attempts have been made to tie the whole century’s patterns together.3 Some brief general statements on the subject either tended to take policy statements at face value— º e.g. on the Islamic or anti-communist nature of the kingdom’s policy—or started from a position of ideological critique of the regime’s position as a dependency of the West. My second aim, then, is to draw attention to some key long-term patterns of Saudi policy; I attempt to show that they link even the very earliest years with the present day. These patterns, moreover, are reflected in current issues in Saudi–European relations, and have implications for the future. Finally, the article highlights lessons from the Saudi case for our under- standing of the foreign policy of small and/or developing states. * I am grateful to the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Rome, and in particular Roberto Aliboni, for making possible the earlier work underlying this study; to Richard Schofield and the staff of the Public Records Office and the British Library for easing my trawl through the documents of the Foreign Office and India Office collections; and to Christopher Clapham for incisive comments that much strengthened the final article.
    [Show full text]
  • PHILLIPS, Sir Horace, KCMG
    SIR HORACE PHILLIPS. Interview Index pp 2-3. Early life and entry to Foreign Service pp 3-6. Shiraz and Bushire, 1947-9. Closing the Bushire office, learning Persian, internal politics, Soviet pressure on Azerbaijan. pp 7-8. Kabul, 1949-50. Pakistani-Indian dispute over the Embassy's ownership. pp 8-10. FO, 1951-3. Problems in South Asia: Kashmir. Learning Arabic. pp 10-13. Jeddah,1953-6. The Buraimi dispute. Discussion of Ibn Saud. pp 13-15. Aden, 1956-60. pp 15-19. Iran, 1960-64. Oil and trade. Stability of the Shah's regime and relations with Khomenei (including comments on the 1970s). pp 19-20. Short comments on the Gulf, 1964-6. pp 20-21. Indonesia, 1966-8. Fall of Sukarno. pp 21-23. Abortive appointment to Jedda. 1968: objections to Phillips's Jewish background. pp 23-25. Tanzania, 1968-73. Restoration of diplomatic relations. Dealings with Nyerere. Problems provoked by Heath government and arms to South Africa. Amin's overthrow of Obote in Uganda. pp 25-29. Turkey, 1973-7. Cyprus crisis of 1974. Reflections on Cyprus problem. p 29. Brief reflections on career. 1 BRITISH DIPLOMATIC ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Gwenda Scarlett interviewing Sir Horace Phillips - 22nd January 1997 in London GS: Sir Horace retired from the Diplomatic Service in 1977 after his final posting, as ambassador to Turkey. He was appointed CMG in 1963 and KCMG in 1973. HP: That is right. GS: Sir Horace, you were born in Glasgow in 1917 and you went to school there. HP: That is right. GS: Would you like to say something about your education and at what point you decided you wanted to join the Foreign Office? HP: I was educated at Hillhead High School in Glasgow - one of the leading grammar schools there.
    [Show full text]
  • Building for Oil: Corporate Colonialism, Nationalism and Urban Modernity in Ahmadi, 1946-1992
    Building for Oil: Corporate Colonialism, Nationalism and Urban Modernity in Ahmadi, 1946-1992 By Reem IR Alissa A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Nezar AlSayyad, Chair Professor Grieg Crysler Professor Teresa Caldeira Fall 2012 Abstract Building for Oil: Corporate Colonialism, Nationalism and Urban Modernity in Ahmadi, 1946-1992 By Reem IR Alissa Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture University of California, Berkeley Professor Nezar AlSayyad, Chair Located at the intersection of oil and space, this dissertation highlights the role of oil as an agent of political, social and cultural change at the level of the everyday urban experience by introducing the oil company town as a modern architectural and urban planning prototype that has been largely neglected in the Middle East. Using the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) town of Ahmadi as a case in point this article offers a new history of oil, architecture and urbanism in Kuwait since 1946. Apart from oil dictating Ahmadi’s location and reason for being various actors were complicit in the creation and playing out of Ahmadi’s urban modernity: British KOC officials, the company’s architectural firm Wilson Mason & Partners, nationalism, the process of Kuwaitization, Ahmadi’s architecture and urbanism, and, especially, the town’s residents. I argue that Ahmadi’s colonial modernity which was initially targeted at the expatriate employees of the company during the 1950s, was later adopted by KOC’s Kuwaiti employees after the country’s independence in 1961, and in turn mediated a drastically new lifestyle, or urban modernity, during the 1960s and 1970s.
    [Show full text]
  • Verbatim Record 2000/11
    NO& corrigé Uncorrected 1 International Court Cour internationale of Justice de Justice THE HAGUE LA HAYE YEAR 2000 Public sitting held on Thursday 8 June 2000, at 10 am., at the Peace Palace, President Guillaume presiding in the case concerning Maritime Delimitation and Territorial Questions between Qatar and Bahrain (Qatar v. Bahrain) VERBATIM RECORD ANNEE 2000 Audience publique tenue lejeudi 8 juin 2000, à IO heures, au Palais de la Paiu, sous la présidence de M. Guillaume,président en I'aflaire de la Délimitation maritime et des questions territoriales entre Qatar et Bahreïn (Qatar c. Bahreïn) COMPTE RENDU Present: President Guillaume Vice-President Shi Judges Oda Bedjaoui Ranjeva Herczegh Fleischhauer Koroma Vereshchetin Higgins Pana-Aranguren Kooijmans Rezek Al-Khasawneh Buergenthal Judges ad hoc Torres Bernhdez Fortier Registrar Couvreur Présents : M. Guillaume, président M. Shi, vice-président MM. Oda Bedjaoui Ranjeva Herczegh Fleischhauer Koroma Vereshchetin Mme Higgins MM. Parra-Aranguren Kooijmans Rezek Al-Khasawneh Buergenthal, juges MM. Torres Bernairdez Fortier, juges ad hoc M. Couvreur, greffier The State of Qatar is represented by: H.E. Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulatif Al-Muslemani, Secretary-General of the Cabinet, as Agent and Counsel; Mr. Adel Sherbini, Legal Adviser, Mr. Sami Abushaikha, Legal Expert, as Counsel: Mr. Eric David, Professor of International Law, Université libre de Bruxelles, Dr. Ali bin Fetais Al-Meri, Director of Legal Department, Diwan Amiri, Mr. Jean-Pierre Quéneudec, Professor of International Law at the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Mr. Jean Salmon, Professor emeritus of International Law, Université libre de Bruxelles, Member of the Institut de droit international, Mr.
    [Show full text]
  • King 'Abd Al-'Aziz' Negotiations with Concessionaire Oil Companies in Saudi Arabia
    King 'Abd al-'Aziz' Negotiations with Concessionaire Oil Companies in Saudi Arabia By HRH Prince 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin Salman Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Kingdom of Saudi Arabia The Middle East Institute Washington, DC Copyright 2002 The Middle East Institute The Middle East Institute 1760 N Street NW Washington, DC 20036 (202) 785-1141 www.TheMiddleEastInstitute.org King 'Abd al-'Aziz' Negotiations with Concessionaire Oil Companies in Saudi Arabia By HRH Prince 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin Salman Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Kingdom of Saudi Arabia The Middle East Institute Washington, DC Copyright 2002 The Middle East Institute King 'Abd al-'Aziz' Negotiations with Concessionaire Oil Companies in Saudi Arabia By HRH Prince 'Abd al-'Aziz Bin Salman Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Executive Summary King 'Abd al-'Aziz bin 'Abd al-Rahman A1 Sa'ud, founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, initially granted a concession for oil exploration in the Kingdom to the British Eastern General Syndicate, but he withdrew that concession when it failed to find oil in the Eastern Province. Because British companies already controlled oil concessions in Iran and Iraq, the King opened the door for companies of other nation­ alities, ultimately turning to the major American oil companies with their wide inter­ national marketing outlets and, in many cases, their independence of the "red line" agreements made by the British with companies operating elsewhere in the Gulf. He thus achieved a strategic balance to British hegemony in the Gulf region, and created the basis for future relations with the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • Energy to the World: the Story of Saudi Aramco Volume 1
    ENERGY TO THE WORLD: TO ENERGY ENERGY TO THE WORLD: THE STORY OF SAUDI ARAMCO OF SAUDI THE STORY THE STORY OF SAUDI ARAMCO VOLUME 1 VOLUME 1 VOLUME www.saudiaramco.com J ENERGY TO THE WORLD : VOLUME ONE TITLE K VOLUME ONE Energy to the World The Story of Saudi Aramco II ENERGY TO THE WORLD : VOLUME ONE VOLUME ONE Energy to the World The Story of Saudi Aramco Shown in this 1937 photo are Dammam Well No. 1, right, the first oil well drilled in Saudi Arabia, and Dammam Well No. 7, the discovery well. Contents Copyright First Edition Volume One Volume Two © 2011 by Aramco Services Company Printed in 2011 Preface xi Illustration: Saudi Arabia viii ISBN All rights reserved. No part of this book Illustration: Saudi Arabia xiv 1 National Resources 1 978-1-882771-23-0 may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or 1 Prospects 1 2 Boom Time 27 Library of Congress by any means, electronic, mechanical, 2 Negotiations 33 3 Transformation 67 Control Number photocopying, recording or otherwise, 200922694 without the written permission of 3 Reading the Rocks 59 4 Rising to the Challenge 99 Aramco Services Company, except by 4 The War Years 93 5 Achieving the Vision 131 Written by a reviewer, who may quote a brief Scott McMurray passage for review. 5 Expansion 123 Appendix 168 Produced by 6 Growing Pains 153 A. Upstream 170 The History Factory 7 Balancing Act 189 B. Downstream 184 Chantilly, Virginia, USA List of Abbreviations 215 C.
    [Show full text]
  • The Holmes Concession and the British-American Rivalry for Bahrain's Oil (1925-1929( PJAEE, 18 (08 ) (2021)
    The Holmes Concession and the British-American Rivalry for Bahrain's Oil (1925-1929( PJAEE, 18 (08 ) (2021) The Holmes Concession and the British-American Rivalry for Bahrain's Oil (1925-1929( (658/676, 1260/1277 AD) 1Researcher /Husham Ali Obai; 2Dr. Imad Jassim Hasan 1,2 Thi - Qar University / Faculty of Education of Humanities / Department of History Iyhsham238@g gmail.com; [email protected] 1Researcher /Husham Ali Obai; 2Dr. Imad Jassim Hasan; The Holmes Concession and the British-American Rivalry for Bahrain's Oil (1925-1929 ( - Palarch’s Journal Of Archaeology Of Egypt/Egyptology 18 (08), 3359-3375. ISSN 1567-214x. Published July, 2021. Keywords: Holmes Concession, Bahrain's Oil. Abstract Oil is one of the discoveries in the modern era that was able to change the map of the world and one of the most important causes of global conflict, and whoever owns oil has become an important source of economic power, as he was able to transform countries from a tribal agricultural society to a civilized industrial society, but the presence of oil in the lands of (a country ) does not mean its transformation into an industrial country, because the presence of oil without investing it does not give the desired benefit from its existence, so the oil industry, oil is one of the industries that require large capital for surveying, exploration and drilling operations, up to the stage of extraction and then export, so the oil countries, including Bahrain, resorted To foreign companies because they lacked money and experience at the beginning of its discovery, and traced its importance as being an important source of energy and raw material for many industries, in addition to being the most important source of income for the Emirate of Bahrain.
    [Show full text]
  • Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930S
    Department of History Research Papers No 2 A Struggle for Supremacy? Great Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930s Fiona Venn Research Papers © Fiona Venn, Department of History, Department of History University of Essex ISBN 1-904059-95-3 First published Dec 2000; re-published Dec 2012 ISSN 2051-9583 A Struggle for Supremacy? Great Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930s Fiona Venn Research Papers No. 2 First published in 2000; Re-published in December 2012 by Department of History, University of Essex Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ © Fiona Venn 2000 ISBN 1-904059-95-3 ISSN 2051-9583 A Struggle for Supremacy? Great Britain, the United States and Kuwaiti Oil in the 1930s In 1903, the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Lansdowne, stated that ‘we should regard the establishment of a naval base, or of a fortified port, in the Persian Gulf by any power as a very grave menace to British interests, and we should certainly resist it with all the means at our disposal.’ Nearly 80 years later, the President of the United States, James Carter, used his 1980 State of the Union Address to proclaim the so-called Carter Doctrine, stating, in almost identical terms, that ‘an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. And such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.’1 These quotations encapsulate neatly the transfer of supremacy in the Persian Gulf from Great Britain to the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • © DLIFLC 1 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Geography
    © DLIFLC 1 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Geography .......................................................................................................... Introduction ..................................................................................................................... Physical Terrain and Topographic Features ................................................................... Climate ............................................................................................................................ Water Resources ............................................................................................................. Major Cities .................................................................................................................... Kuwait City ................................................................................................................. Other Cities ................................................................................................................. Natural Hazards .............................................................................................................. Environmental Concerns ................................................................................................. Chapter 2 History .............................................................................................................. Introduction ................................................................................................................... Ancient Civilizations
    [Show full text]
  • John Philby and His Political Roles in the Arabian Peninsula, 1917-1953
    John Philby and his political roles in the Arabian Peninsula, 1917-1953 by Khalid Abdullah Krairi A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham October 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. DEDICATION To the soul of my father ii ABSTRACT This thesis departs from the traditional historiographical views that portray Philby as having no political influence either while he was serving his country or after his resignation from government service when he was settled in Saudi Arabia. It also departs from picturing him as a man who tended to undermine British policy, arguing that he was loyal to his country, as was plain during his years of service. The thesis examines his background, from his early years to the work he did for his country in India, Iraq and Transjordan and takes an analytical and historical approach. It seeks to present a more comprehensive understanding of Philby’s mission to Arabia, its objectives and outcomes, focusing on his political work in Arabia and his efforts to solve problems which otherwise might have threatened British interests.
    [Show full text]
  • Qatar in the American Strategy 1900-1917
    Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology Issn No : 1006-7930 Qatar in the American strategy 1900-1917 L. Dr. Taysair jadoow alwosh College of Education for Girl/Al-Iraqi University Introduction Qatar has occupied an important place in the American strategy since the beginning of the twentieth century, especially after the discovery of oil in it and in some Gulf regions. American oil companies sought to invest in the Qatari lands and tried to obtain fixed sites that serve their oil interests, but that desire collided with many obstacles, The most important of them are the prohibiting treaties and agreements that Britain imposed on sheikhs, princes and the Persian Gulf, which obliged them not to give up or rent part of their lands or grant concessions in them to any country without their consent. Qatar was not outside these treaties, and its sheikh was not able to exceed those obligations that restrict his authority, because that represents a great adventure in his authority and standing, and it is very possible that Britain excludes him, like other Sheikhs of the Arab Gulf, as his rule is closely linked to his implementation of politics British, which transformed the entire Arabian Gulf region into a British lake throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Because of the strategic location that Qatar has enjoyed, and the expectations of American oil companies that there are quantities of oil in them, these companies have made repeated attempts to breach the British embargo and seek to find a foothold in Qatar from time to time, despite the discovery of oil reserves in Oklahoma State ( Oklahoma) in 1907, and the United States guaranteed important and adequate reserves.
    [Show full text]