Informal Empire and the Middle East

Abstract

Fierce tribal loyalties, Islam and the extreme desiccation of the landscape convinced the British in the mid-Victorian era, as with the Persians and Romans before them, to turn down opportunities of an extensive formal empire in much of the Middle East and to prefer informal influence in the region. Yet the Middle East straddled the strategic and shortest route to India, and the Ottoman Empire — although considered the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ — managed, merely by holding together the disparate territories of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Asia Minor, to block the expanse of Russia into the Mediterranean. The British much rather preferred to influence a pliable and weak Ottoman Empire than the expanding and much feared Russian Empire.1