Pirate Coast Research Paper

The History of Pirate Coast

HSS 201-002

Fatma Hamdan Alabdouli
201231428

5th. November. 2015

Introduction The Pirate Coast included the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi because this was where European and Arab pirates from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century attacked foreign ships. In 1818, there was the British campaign against the pirates. For this reason, Britain concluded a treaty of peace to end piracy and plundering and desist from the slave trade. Consequently, there were taken actions to defend British marine routes. However, many historians insist that Britain followed its geopolitical interests and wanted to establish supremacy in the Pirate Coast. As a result, current essay intends to reveal the history

At first, the area of the Pirate Coast was known as the Coast of Oman. It included the southern shores of the Gulf. The ruling families and principal cities were the following: Fujairah (Al Sharqi), Abu Dhabi (Al Nahyan), Ras al Khaimah (Al Qawasim), Dubai (Al Maktoum), Sharjah (Al Qawasim), Ajman (Al Nuaimi), and Umm Al-Qawain (Al Mualla). In the late eighteenth century, the emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai were named ‘the Pirate Coast’ because the Al Qawasim tribe attacked their ships. The history of the Pirate Coast is debatable as Arab system was supposed to be related to piracy and extortion (“Country Profile: The United Arab Emirates,”

Moreover, pirates attacked traders to steal their products. One should say that the efforts of the UAE rulers to wipe out the piracy were unsuccessful. Consequently, it is evident that piracy was a negative process of the ancient times, and it was unfair to object its existence. Moreover, the spread of piracy was related to the development of marine routes. The pirates attacked not only British ships but Iranian, Indian, and Chinese, as those countries were the most successful traders. As a result, piracy in the Persian Gulf was difficult to root out. Moreover, it was not only Arabian piracy but also European one that was widely spread in the Persian Gulf (Davidson,