Entangled Boundaries: British India and the Persian Gulf Region during the Transition from Empires to Nation States, c. 1880-1935

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Abstract

Taking a closer look at a variety of human and other interconnections and especially at processes of migration and exchange, this paper focuses on the entangled histories evolving between British India and the wider Persian Gulf region during the period of transition from informal British Indian imperialism in the area to its gradual retreat and the inception of nation-states, spanning more than fifty years between 1880 and 1935. In this connection, the paper will particularly focus on political, economic and social interactions in the Gulf rather than in the Indian subcontinent, although developments within the latter were of course a constitutive part of such processes. The paper more directly asks for transformations of people’s lives in immediate or more distant connection to the advancing and later retreating British Empire during this period. The questions are why and under what circumstances migration and exchange processes started, and why and under what circumstances they ceased to exist. From a broader spatial, yet rather unusual perspective, the mapped terrain of this study geographically encompasses the maritime and land routes connecting British India with the wider Persian Gulf region and notably the landmass forming the northern and southern shores of the Gulf and its immediate and more distant hinterland.