The Ring of Steam, the Lands of Islam, and the Search for Order

Abstract

This chapter addresses Britain's strategies for promoting order along the southern and eastern borders of the Ottoman Empire where it had naval authority. It underlines that disorder and instability would be bad and expensive in themselves, and the only means by which other powers might upset the status quo. The chapter also focuses on the most continuously challenging problem: the border between the Ottoman and Persian empires, which Britain attempted to stabilise in conjunction with Russia, in order to defuse the entrenched hostility between these two political and religious foes. It highlights that this was an example of Aberdeen's Tory strategy of working with Russia to secure global peace and the tensions that frequently arose between Britain and the Ottoman Empire during these years. Ultimately, the chapter investigates how Britain found Ottoman behaviour in the region much more of a challenge than Russian or French activity. In the Gulf and around Aden, the Ottoman claims were defeated. To an outsider, Britain's behaviour on the Middle Eastern waterways cannot have seemed any less assertive than Russia's behaviour in its Balkan sphere of influence.