BEFORE OIL9inaccessibility also secured a mineral- rich realm for a small number
of distant ancestors of the early Arabs. The meager size of the popula-
tion ensured that, once resources were discovered, the size of the bounty
relative to the size of the populace would bring prosperity.
IMPERIAL INTRUSION AND THE FOUNDATION
OF HEREDITARY RULEEarly breaches of the Gulf ’s historical sequestration came in the form
of contacts with European and Ottoman military delegations in the early
1500s. The Portuguese arrived first, maintaining a nominal but brutal
presence until fading away in the mid- 1700s.^2 The British and Ottomans
were the most influential of the interlopers. Although neither empire
spent much blood or treasure defending interests on the Arabian Pen-
insula, their authority had two lasting effects. First, since the imperial
powers were unwilling to send their own citizens to colonize these lands
formally, they instead concentrated power in the hands of preexisting
tribal ruling families. Second, they pushed the Arab tribal leaders to
define the boundaries of the territories they controlled. Many of these
boundaries later became international borders.
The Ottomans and British regarded their Arabian territories as buf-
fer zones that could shield more important possessions from enemy
inroads. From the early 1500s until their empire dissolved during World
War I, the Ottomans held superficial control over the peninsula’s Red
Sea coast, including the trading and pilgrimage cities of Jeddah, Mecca,
and Medina. The Ottomans also maintained a tenuous grip on parts of
eastern Arabia: Kuwait, Qatar, and the al- Hasa Oasis in today’s Eastern
Province of Saudi Arabia. Istanbul used its Arabian presence to thwart
European inroads into its strategic eastern trading cities of Baghdad and
Basra, in today’s Iraq.
The British were the strongest external power in the Persian Gulf for
350 years. They arrived tentatively in the early 1600s, rose to dominance
during the height of the British Raj in India in the late 1800s, and finally