The End of Empire in the Gulf - by Tancred Bradshaw (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context.

Tancred Bradshaw - an academic historian with extensive experience in the region - sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and - most importantly - the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

About the Author

Tancred Bradshaw received his PhD in 2004 from SOAS, University of London and has since taught at Birkbeck College, London City University and Florida State University. He currently works as an independent historian and regional consultant. He has previously published The Glubb Reports (2015) and Britain and Jordan (I.B.Tauris, 2012), as well as numerous peer-reviewed journal articles.