A preview of the great game in Asia—I: the British occupation of Perim and Aden in 1799
1973; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00263207308700224
ISSN1743-7881
Autores Tópico(s)Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies
ResumoDuring the Six Days' War between the Arabs and the Israelis in the summer of 1967, the Israelis broke the Arab blockade of the gulf of Aqaba by driving the Egyptians from their fortress at Sharm el-Sheikh, commanding the straits of Tiran. It was interesting to wonder, idly, whether the Arabs might try to reimpose the blockade by occupying one of the least known outposts of the British Empire, that the British were then talking of renouncing. This was the first territory the British occupied in the Near East, the island of Perim in the straits of Bab el-Mandab at the entrance to the Red Sea. They occupied it, during the War of the Second Coalition, for this same reason, to impose a blockade against the French in Egypt. Had the Arabs occupied Perim, it is to be hoped they would have escaped the misfortunes that in 1799 befell the British. Like its better known successor as a British base in the Near East, the more beautiful and hospitable island of Cyprus, Perim proved quite unsuited to its purpose. One of the principal characteristics of British activity in the Near East throughout the first half of the nineteenth century was a sublime disregard of geography. The British would send solitary envoys, and sometimes military expeditions, to extend British influence by negotiating with princes of whom the British knew little, or to fight for their influence in territories of which they knew hardly more. Occasionally these missions would be strikingly successful. Eldred Pottinger happened to be in Herat during the siege. Usually they would be at the least wastefully expensivewitness Mountstuart Elphinstone's costly mission to the crumbling kingdom of Kabul-and occasionally fatal, which Arthur Conolly learned in the dungeons of Bokhara. Eventually, as applied in distant Tartary, this British habit became known as The Great Game in Asia: its most spectacular
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