Talk:Persian Gulf Residency

Headquarters
Where exactly did this officer reside? -- Slacker (talk) 01:52, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * something tells me it was Bushehr, not sure though.--Aa2-2004 (talk) 09:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Government
Hello fellow editor, Alexandermcnabb, I noticed you recently reverted an edit of mine and since I do not want to edit war, I opened this talk page discussion. I understand that the Persian Gulf Residency was a group of British protectorates after 1947, and that's why I made the edit. It never had a "colonial government", in fact it never even had a central government. They were simply a group of monarchies with a Chief Resident appointed by the Government of India and later the Foreign Office in the UK Government. It was never a colony. The government_type parameter should reflect the form of government. PadFoot2008 (talk) 14:32, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hiya. The Persian Gulf Residency was a body of the Bombay Government, founded out of the British East India Company and followed the effective subjugation of 'Trucial Oman' as well as what is now Qatar and Bahrain, also with roles in other areas of the Gulf depending on the ebb and flow of British influence. In the area in which I'm particularly interested - the Emirates - the invasion of Ras Al Khaimah in 1819 led to the signing of a treaty with the rulers of the coast and the British, which led to the establishment of the 'Trucial States' - a formal British protectorate which ceded all foreign policy and relations to Britain. British sovereignty over the Trucial States - via the Government of Bombay - carried on through from 1819 to 1947, when it passed to the Foreign Office. So the Residency (with a local resident in Sharjah and then, latterly, a formal residency in Sharjah and then Dubai) was in fact a colonial government, reporting through to Bombay. While the Trucial States was not formally colonised, it was under imperial control until independence in 1971. The Rulers of the Trucial States were not, in our accepted modern term, monarchs - they were Rulers (and, in fact, are still today - the Arabic title is 'Hakim' - Ruler) - their standing depended on whether or not the British conferred Trucial State status - and, in fact, the Brits withheld this status from Fujairah until 1952. Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation @Alexandermcnabb. One final concern — the status already mentions "British Colonial Residency" and "Group of British Protectorates". Is it necessary to mention British again in "British colonial government" in the form of government? The form of government doesn't require mentioning the sovereign state. Also as you said, they never formally had a "colonial government". I do not know what else could be put but the current doesn't seem accurate. PadFoot2008 (talk) 16:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, the only effective 'governance' we'd recognise today was the British resident (local), reporting to the Persian Gulf residency - the local government, the majlis, was entirely that - local. They didn't necessarily enjoy any form of sovereignty over the interior, BTW, because that was lawless and dominated by bedouin tribes. The British tended to advise the Rulers in affairs such as piracy, slave trading and gun running - to which effect they established the Trucial Oman Scouts in 1952 - a paramilitary force that reported to the British Resident and NOT the local Rulers and which established a form of 'the rule of law' over the interior. Until 1971, there was no 'sovereign state' as such, other than local rulers who slowly asserted control over their individual emirates by establishing local 'defence forces' such as the Abu Dhabi Defence Force and Dubai Defence Force, which were seperate to the Trucial Scouts. Like everything else here, it was basically a glorious mess that defies pigeonholing!!! Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 16:47, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand; do we even need a government parameter? It all seems a bit too messy. PadFoot2008 (talk) 17:05, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, it all 'formally' reported to the British 'Government of Bombay' via the Persian Gulf Residency. So it was 'British governance', perhaps - albeit - 'informally' to an extent. But control was, nevertheless, asserted. Even to the point of bombardment of Rulers who disagreed with British 'policy' - even as late as the 1920s (I think the last Trucial State to be bombarded by a British ship was Fujairah in the late 1920s, but Ajman was also bombarded punitively in the mid-1920s...). Best Alexandermcnabb (talk) 17:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I mean, "British governance" isn't a form of government, is it? Maybe "Colonial governance"? PadFoot2008 (talk) 17:17, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Arabic name
A bit pedantic, but I have not seen the term "المقيمية السياسية البريطانية في الخليج الفارسي" used in any Arabic source, except this one here, which I suspect copied it from Wikipedia in any case. الدبوني (talk) 07:24, 22 February 2024 (UTC)