America and the Arabian Peninsula the First Two Hundred Years

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America and the Arabian Peninsula: The First Two Hundred YearsAuthor(s): Joseph J. MaloneSource: Middle East Journal, Vol. 30, No. 3, Bicentennial Issue (Summer, 1976), pp. 406-424Published by: Middle East InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4325520 .

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AMERICAAND THE ARABIAN

PENINSULA: THE FIRSTTWO

HUNDRED YEARS

Joseph . Malone

OMPARISONSfacilitatemeasurementof the pace of change.In 1931King 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn 'Abd al-Rahman Al Sa'Tidwon praise for his

"improving ways," including the use of automobiles to transportpilgrims across Arabia. An American writer saw " . . . a great share in themotor trade"for the United States, and noted approvingly that several of theKing's young subjects were, through the generosity of an American patron,studying in America.1 Four and one-half decades later, as the United Statesobserves its Bicentennial, Saudi Arabia is embarked upon a five-year, $142billion plan of development.2 Many of the 6,500 students from the ArabianPeninsula currently enrolled in American colleges and universities are Saudi

nationals.3Just before World War II there were 273 Americans resident in Saudi

Arabia, about 60 per cent of the total in the Peninsula.4 Today there arenearly 20,000 American heads of families in Saudi Arabia, and the pace ofinflux quickens. Less dramatic, but also increasing, are the numbers ofAmericans living and working in Kuwayt, Bahrayn, Qatar, the United ArabAmirates and Oman. It may be that a question put forward by the Earl ofRonaldshay in 1911 will finally be answered. He asked " . . . what is going

to be the effect of the coming industrial organization of the East upon thewages and standard of living in the West?" Admittedly, a large question". . . opening up an ever-expanding vista of controversy and speculation

1. The patron was Charles R. Crane, the writer Edwin Elliott Calverly, whose missionary en-deavors in Arabia began before World War I. His report, "What is behind the news in Arabia," s in theextensive, well-catalogued Calverly Papers, in the archives of the Hartford Seminary Foundation(Box 146, Document 69444).

2. For an elaboration of industrial and infrastructure development in the Arabian Peninsula, see theaddress by Dr. Charles W. Hostler, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Commerce, to theConference on "The Middle East and Energy: Focus '76" at the Johns Hopkins University School ofAdvanced International Studies, Washington, D.C., on December 10, 1975.

3. Information supplied by Dr. Virgil Crippin, President, American Friends of the Middle East.4. John A. DeNovo, AmericanInterests and Policies in the Middle East (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1963), p. 365. In 1938 there were 165 Americans in Bahrayn, eight in Aden Colonyand Protectorate, six in Oman, seven in Kuwayt.

A JOSEPHJ. MALONE is Professor of Foreign Affairs and Director, Middle East, South Asia andAfrican Studies, The National War College, Washington, DC.

406



AMERICA AND THE ARABIAN PENINSULA 407

. . . which must occupy the attention of economists and statesmen in a

steadily increasing degree."5

It is a question for the second 200 years of American relations with the

Arabian Peninsula. Almost to the end of the two centuries which separateus from that singular ceremony in Philadelphia, Arabia was a subject for the

specialist, too esoteric and remote to nudge the awareness of mainstream

America. ARAMCO as a balance of payments factor, inexpensive Arabiancrude oil as a catalyst for Western industrial expansion? They were spe-cialized subjects, too. It has not been their existence, but their departurewhich has brought them fame.

Yet the first 200 years were not barren of meaning for future American

ties with the Arabian Peninsula. The legacies created and the associations

established will work their influence upon the future. Bicentenarianismprovides an opportunity to identify some of them.

Had there been direct American contact with the Arabian Peninsula before

our Declaration of Independence? Probably not. Articles of American manu-facture may have appeared in Arabiansuqs after entering the Sultan's domin-ion at Symrna. New England vessels joined British convoys to that flourish-ing port for decades before the American Revolution. News of English ships

engaged in transporting pilgrims toJiddah must have been received there by

Yankee skippers. So, it may be assumed, were hints of commercial oppor-tunities, which made the East India Company's agent at Mocha ". . . themost important figure in the country-trade of the Red Sea."6 Americansmay have served on English vessels which visited Arabian ports at that

early stage. The captain of a New England vessel which called at Mocha in

1819 reported a meeting with a Philadelphian serving in the Imam's Army,who 20 years before had deserted from an East Indiaman.7 Were there

other Americans before him, survivors of shipwrecks or acts of piracy?8

5. The Earl of Ronaldshay, An EasternMiscellany (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1911), ix. Yet he couldhardly have had much of a sense of urgency, having but a few years earlier, after a visit to TsaristRussia, written that ". . . oil from Baku naturally travels far, the rival wells of Pennsylvania and Limabeing situated at a comfortable distance on the other side of the globe." On the Outskirtsof EmpireinAsia (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1904), p. 161.

6. Holden Furber, BombayPresidency n theMid-EighteenthCentury (London: Asia Publishing House,1965), p. 38.

7. Notes taken by the Hon. Raymond A. Hare from the unpublished journal of Captain WilliamAustin, which was in the possession of Austin's granddaughter, Mrs. Samuel Stratton.

8. A near contemporary was the sole survivor of the massacre of the officers and crew of the Essex,out of Salem, near Kamaran Island in 1806, but it is not clear whether John Herman Poll (later

'Abdallah Muhammad, of Dhufar) was American or Dutch. See the excellent article by the scholar-diplomat Hermann F. Eilts, one of the small company of the American Arabists through whose ef-forts the tenuous link with the Peninsula endured into the era of the petrodollar. The article is"Sayyid Muhammad bin Aqil of Dhufar: Malevolent or Maligned?" in Historical Collections(Salem,The Essex Institute), Volume 109, No. 3, July, 1973. Captain Austin (see previous note) met andinterviewed Poll in 1819. Piracy was not an exclusive occupation, and may have been responsible forputting the first American ashore in Arabia long before Paul Revere saddled his horse. See, for ex-ample, the reference to Captain Tew in S. B. Miles, The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf(London: Frank Cass, 1966), p. 228.





AMERICAAND THE ARABIAN PENINSULA 409

in 1802 (". . . the firstvessel of that Nation which ever visited the portof Bussora.It was out of New York, and carrieddispatchesfor the Courtof Directors from Sir Home Popham,then at Mocha").15After a secondAmericanship,Joseph,arrived ess thana year later, the Resident

showedhis concernby writing:

. . it appearing o be probable hatvesselsof thatdescriptionmayin futurefrequentlynavigate he PersianGulph, I haverespectfullyrequestedthat Honble, the President nCouncil, to furnish me with copies of any treaties actually existing between GreatBritainand the WesternRepublic and with such Commandson the Subject of theirIntercoursewith this Port as he maydeem it requisiteto give for my guidance.16

Expeditionsandoutpostsin the OldNorthwestdidnotopen manyAmeri-can eyes to a vision of a continentalrepublic.The "Western

Republic",characterizedby the British as being maritimeand commercial,was littlemorethanthat n theperceptionsof aninfluential egmentof itsownpeople.If this was so, it would seem all the more understandable hat the firstformalrelationshipwith anEasternrulershouldassociate he United Stateswith the Sultanof Muscat,whose maritimeandcommercialpreoccupationskepthimfromeitherexerting ontroloforachievingegitimacyninnerOman.

The Muscati-American reatyof AmityandCommerce 1833) wassignedat a time when Americantradewith Red Sea and IndianOcean ports was

declininginto inconsequentiality.17dmundRoberts of Portsmouth,NewHampshire,was hardly he proponentof somegreatcommercialanddiplo-maticDrangNach Osten.Rather,he was the veteranof reverses n commer-cialventuresto LatinAmericaandZanzibar,who soughtto recouphislossesby changingthe groundrules. And the key to Zanzibarwas, at that stage,the Sultanof Muscat.

The initiative o negotiateatreatywouldhavecometo naughthadRobertsnot been related by marriage o Secretaryof the Navy Levi Woodburn.

Nor was AndrewJackson, the firstpracticingcontinentalist n the WhiteHouse (Jefferson and the LouisianaPurchasenotwithstanding), verse toshowingthe flag n regionsconsideredto be the preserveof the British.Butthe treatywas signed, and if mythology is draped n the mantleof Clio inthe rhetoric of contemporaryOmaniandAmericanstatesmen,perhapstheend does, afterall, justify the means.

15. India Office Library(London), LettersFromBussoraand Gombroon,Samuel Manesty to the Court ofDirectors of the East India Company, October 13, 1802.

16. LettersFromthe Bassra Residency,Samuel Manesty to the Secret Committee of the Court of Di-rectors, September 10, 1803.

17. J. Smith Homans, An Historical and Statistical Accountof the ForeignCommercef the United States(New York: G. P. Putnam, 1857), p. 183.



410 THE MIDDLE EAST JOURNAL

An officer of the Peacock,which carried the documents of treaty ratifica-

tion to Muscat, wrote that:

. the landing place was thronged by Arabs, to see the novel sight of twenty American

officers, in full health andhigh spirits, contrasting strangely with their own tauny, meagerlooks

to which were added the mandatory remarks about being jostled in the

filthy, narrow lanes of the bazaars.18Later, when the "tawny, meager" crew-men of the Sultanah,which brought the Sultan's ratification to New York,had their beards pulled and attire ridiculed by curious throngs,19Charles

Dickens-no Arab-walked with them, recording impressions of trash-

cluttered streets, lawless throngs and stinking alleys.20 t is just as well that the

immutablelaw of history(people seldom remember any)works in this instance.The treaty with Muscat served no purpose for Roberts, who died beforeratification, but facilitated American entry into the now-controversial prac-tice of arms transfers to the Middle East. A number of brass 24-pounderswere imported from the United States in 1842.21 Much was read into thetreaty in other quarters. A number of British officials thought they saw anAmerican commercial challenge being transformed into an imperial rivalry.22It was an impression which in 1856 encouraged the Persians to seek an

American connection as a counterpoise to British influence and, conjointly,to Omani expansionism. The proposed treaty called upon the United States

18. W. S. W. Ruschenberger, M.D., USN, A VoyageRoundthe World ncluding an Embassy o Muscatand Siam in 1835, 1836, and 1837 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1838), p. 56, 69. The highspirits must have contrasted with feelings when Peacockran aground on Masirah Island. Were theymingled with gratitude for the protection of the Sultan from the coastal peoples for whom the shipwas a "target of opportunity", and wonderment at a ruler who could say, in effect but in the grandArab tradition, ". . . if your ship doesn't work, take one of mine"?

19. See Herman F. Eilts, "Ahmed Bin Na'aman's Mission to the United States in 1840: The Voyageof al-Sultanah to New York City" in Historical Collections (Salem: The Essex Institute), Vol. 98, No. 4,October, 1962. After searching for references to Muscat and Zanzibar in a number of books, LeviWoodbury concluded ". . . they are very barren on them." p. 229.

20. "New York City, as Dickens saw it in 1842, was low, flat and straggling, enclosed by a hedgeof masts, a city without baths or plumbing, lighted by gas and scavenged by pigs." S. E. Morison andH. S. Commager, The Growth of theAmericanRepublic(New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), I, p.493.

21. One of which eventually turned up in the Buraymi Oasis-now al-'Ayn, in the United ArabAmirates-". . . brought thither from Sohar in 1876 by Seyyid Azzan bin Kais and used against thefort it now defends." Miles, op. cit., p. 536. Later surplus gunpowder from the War between the Stateswas shipped to Muscat, and was only expended in recent times in firing the Jalili Fort cannon which untilstill more recently, signalled the closing of the Muscat town gates after sundown. See Joseph J. Malone,The Arab Lands of WesternAsia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 223.

22. In October 1839, in a letter to John Cam Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control of theEast India Company, the Governor of Bombay, Sir James Carnac, in exposing his opposition to theoccupation of Aden stated, ". . . we may have occupied it for aught I know, to prevent Egyptians orAmericans from doing so; in that view we had better given it to the Imaum of Muscat, securing toourselves all we wanted." G. S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean1810-1850 (London: Ox-ford University Press, 1967) pp. 300, 301.




to provide,nteralia, naval ssistance . . . to enable he PersianGovern-ment to take possession of and to subjugate such of its islandsand ports(for instance Kishm,Ormuzand Bahrein)as show insubordination . ."23

But America'sImperialAge was decadesaway,and the Persianauthoritieshad to settle for a commercialconvention.24ust before the centennialof

the Declaration of Independence,the purchase of an enclave at the Babal-Mandabwas proposed by the Americanministerat Constantinople.ButGeorge Boker was a poet, and his suggestionwas assumedto be a formof poetic license.25The United States had long since expandedacrossthewide Missouri to the Pacificshore, and now it was engaged upon fillingin the blank spaces in between, as befitted a continentalpower.

America'stenuous relationshipswith Arabia,after a centuryas an inde-

pendent nation,were materialand obviousmanifestationsof this country'sMaritimeAge. In 1876 another America was preparing ts approachtoArabia.Its spiritualoutlookandmessianicqualitieswere as old asPlymouthPlantationand as rugged as the Americanwilderness in which the "NewZion" was erected. The Americanmissionarieswho looked to Arabiare-gardedthemselvesas trulythe Childrenof Israelandsuccessorsof theJewswho had "forfeited" heir heritage. In consequence, they consideredtheMuslimcapture of Palestine in 637 as one of the majorevents in world

history to follow the promulgationof the Old Testament.The ArabianMission,founded at New Brunswick,New Jersey, in 1889

after years of preparation,markedthe event with the first singing of theArabianMissionHymn, a verse of which ran:

To the Host of Islams leading

To the slave in bondage bleeding

To the desert dweller pleading

Bring His love to them.26

Smallwonderthatthe ReverendJamesCantine'spledge -"our ultimateob-ject is to occupy the interiorof Arabia"-should have become the watch-word and motto of the Mission.27

What were the origins of a design so grand? In 1847 the AmericanSundaySchool Union had answeredthat question directly and succinctly.

23. J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795 -1880 (London: Oxford University Press, 1968),p. 458.

24. James A. Field, America and the Mediterranean World, 1776-1882 (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1969) pp. 256-259.

25. It was in fact a suggestion that a French project, a casualty of the Franco-PrussianWar, be takenover. Field, op. cit. p. 341.

26. Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia, the Cradleof Islam (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, "pub-lishers of Evangelical Literature," 1900) p. 357.

27. Ibid., p. 353.



412 THE MIDDLEEASTJOURNAL

A Christian'sassociationswith Arabia". . . are more sacredand abidingthan [with}any countryon the face of the earth,exceptingPalestine."28urk-hardt was quoted approvingly:". . . the sacred historyof the childrenofIsrael will never be properly understood, so long as we are not minutelyacquaintedwith every thing relatingto the Bedouin Arabs.29

Some ratherrockysoil hadalreadybeen foundin the confessionallymixedFertile Crescentby Americanmissionaries.But the ArabianMissionwasun-daunted by accounts of the impenetrabilityof Islam, and especiallyof theMuslim heartland.It was a case of renderingunto God whatwould not berenderedunto Alexander,againstwhose imperialdesign". . . the descend-ants of Ishmael were a solitary exception to the general subserviency.30

It may have been that the PeninsularArabs'

. . . inveterate predilection for the desert stands in the way of their civilization, but the

things that are impossible with man are possible with God. Nothing short of Divine Power

can overturn habits and modes of life which have come down to them through nearly

forty centuries unchanged.31

The ArabianMission began its labors in the midst of America'sshort-lived ImperialAge, and was fired by the confidence of a people who hadspanneda continent as well as by the zeal characteristic f missionarywork.Their perception of PeninsularArabs was of a people with great force of

character,andprofound sense of honor, but misled by a doctrine which re-jected the Resurrection,". . . the only sure foundationof a sinner'shope,while shutting from view the love of God, and holding up no perfect ex-ample as the object at once of homageand imitation.32 In time, the ArabianMissionwould modify such conclusions,and develop within its ranksa num-ber of scholarly specialists in the field of Arabic and Islamic studies, but

28. Anon., The Araband his Country (Philadelphia:The American Sunday School Union, 1847), p. 7.The frontispiece depicts an Arab in rich ceremonial dress, bearing a lance with a khunjar in his belt,holding his horse in check.

29. Ibid., pp. 7, 8. Job's life in Arabia ". . . darkened by affliction and brightened by prosperity" wascited, as was the asylum gained there by Elijah. For Moses, it was more than the inspiration of theburning bush, for on the shores of the Red Sea, he ". . . and the patriarchs . . . put in motion thosesprings of civilization which from that period have never ceased to urge forward the whole human racein the career of improvement." Much more recently, scholars have compared the literature of two cognateSemitic literatures, both the product of nomadic cultures, the Old Testament and pre-Islamic Arabictexts. They have been found to be ". . . alike in literary genres, even down to verbal expressions,and . . . the characters and actors in both cherished the same

virtues and fell victim to the samevices. . .' This would seem to be what Burkhardt had in mind. The quotation is from a recent book bythe distinguished Old Testament scholar, Morris S. Seale. It is The DesertBible.'NomadicTribal Cultureand Old TestamentInterpretation(London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1974), p. vii.

30. The Arab and His Country, p. 105. "In the independence and haughtiness of their spirit, theygazed upon his dominion with undisturbed self-confidence, alike disdaining to court his favour or con-ciliate his affection: they even dared to reject his friendship and despise his menaces."

31. Ibid., p. 169.32. Ibid., p. 160.




in 1889 conversion to Christianitywas the raisond'etre, nd ". . . thetime to favourthe Arab raceshall yet come."33

On his exploratory journey of 1891, Cantine travelledfrom Cairo toAden, and after a visit to Lahej, moved on to Baghdadwith stops inMuscat,Bahraynand Basrah.The potentialof Basrahas a mission stationwas describedin characteristicerms-". . . here seemed to be the placeto drive the opening wedge."34

After two decades of effort, the ArabianMission was established n fivelocations-Amarah, Basrah,Kuwayt, Manamah Bahrayn),and at Matrah

(Sultanateof Muscatand Oman).The threemissions in the ArabianPenin-sulawere staffed by medicalmissionariesas well as by ministersconcernedwith the primarymission, and in the earlyyears by colporteurs, n whose

shops were sold scripturalmaterials,with varyingdegreesof success.35In time, the hospitals, originallyconsidered as a means for removing

prejudice, andgaining access, became the primarymission.36Those whoseresponsibilities were religious became educators, and largely seculareducatorsat that.37Yet the ArabianMission'sreports and documents arereplete with evidence of a lingering hope that a wedge might after all be

33. Ibid. p. 174. And, for that matter, to "favour" the Jews as well. A pioneer of the ArabianMission,

Samuel Zwemer, set out for Sana'a in 1894 to distribute Hebrew New Testaments to theJews of Yemen, at the request of the Mildmay Mission. He was arrested and sent back to Aden byOttoman authorities, just as the latter had interceded with the British Political Resident at Baghdad,years before, to withdraw the proselytizing mission to the Jews of Baghdad, sponsored by the AnglicanBishop of Jerusalem. Zwemer, op. cit., p. 363.

34. Ibid. p. 360. Zwemer would have preferred Sana'a, with its healthy climate and "centrallocation." The use of the term "wedge" had frequently occurred in writings of Arabia. In 1925, theAmerican Vice-Consul in Tehran reported that ". . . Ibn Saud, the leader of the Wahhabis who arepractically supreme throughout Arabia, recently purchased three small American cars. During his in-vestment of Mecca he sent these three automobiles straight across Arabia from Kuwait . . . toJedda . . . While it would be extremely difficult and dangerous for a white person to make this trip,the journey above referred to is the entering wedge and the Arabs will probably purchase more auto-

mobiles." (Emphasis added). National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Consular Papers, Tehran, Fullerto the Department of State, May 5, 1925.35. In the Evangelistic and Education Report from Kuwayt in 1925, it was noted that '. . . the days

of tearing up the scriptures in front of our Bible shop, and the snatching of books out of thecolporteur's hands and stoning on the streets seem to have passed. There is still some cursing to beendured, but Arab friends now undertake to rebuke the offenders." Calverley Papers, Box 149,Document 69835.

36. For example, the report of the Mason Memorial Hospital, Bahrayn, for 1921 reported 503major operations and treatment of over 6,000 patients. "Evangelistic work in the wards has beeninterrupted by numerous tours and hindered by the press of medical work." In 1921 members ofthe Bahrayn mission visited Riyadh, Hofuf, Dhahran, Qatif, Qatar and spent two months in TrucialOman. Ibid., Box 149, Document 69833.

37. Josephine Van Peursem, who served in Arabia for 40 years, was a pioneer in the education ofthe Arab blind, made translations into Arabic Braille. She was a registered nurse, and, with herhusband, the Reverend Gerrit Van Peursem, took a special interest in developing facilities for orphans.Mrs. Van Peursem died in March of this year, in her 93rd year. The Sunday Record (BergenCounty, New Jersey, March 21, 1976). As with medical services, Arab princes as well as the Arab poorbenefitted from the Mission's educational efforts, most notably the al-Sabahs of Kuwayt during EdwinCalverley's long tenure there. The access gained, and influence acquired through the presence of womendoctors and medical aides in the Arabian mission was incalculable. See Eleanor T. Calverley, M.D., MyArabian Days and Nights (New York: Crowell, 1958).




driven. There was speculationthat Saida,a slave girl, might have expe-rienced conversionin the last momentsof her life in the missionhospitalat Kuwayt,or that success was at hand in the special school for Africanyoungsters,rescued froma groundedbuggeleh ngagedin the slavetrade.38But when the ArabianMission penetratedthe interiorof Arabia,medicalknowledgemade the journeypossible.39

The primarymission had to be identified over and over again. Theinvincible Samuel Zwemer had no doubt what it was. After distributinghis tract "Mohammedor Christ-on whom do you rely?" n MuscatandMatrah in 1897, he reported that it ". . . stirred thought as well asopposition."40The opposition included the Sultan, who complained to the

Departmentof State, which n daintyandfastidiousprose suggested,through

the acting consul, that it might be ". . . the better part of wisdom"forZwemerto desist.4'

Thirtyyears later, a reportof evangelisticwork among in-patients n theMatrahHospitalnoted thatas manyas 50 men andwomen attendedSundayservicesin the courtyard,and that ". . . their appreciationof the messageis very encouraging.42 The perception of others who attended thoseservices was ". . . what do you do for diversionon a Sundayafternoonin the mission hospital in Matrah?"Curiosity was often interpreted as

enthusiasm, or at least, interest, not only in attendance at religiousservices,but in the saleof scripturalmaterials.43 ence it is understandablethat the missionarywould alwaysbe encouraged,not only by an intimationof susceptibility,but also by a suggestionof alienation.44

38. Zwemer, op. cit., p. 366. In 1930 Dr. Calverley informed the Director of the Bible Lands Mis-sions Aid Society in London that the Arabian mission had 38 members in the field, ". . . giving medicalaid and showing lantern slide pictures of Christ on the Cross to thousands of persons." Mission membersdevoted much home leave to raising funds for their work in Arabia. In the 1920s for example, a reportfrom Scribner, Nebraska, advised that Mesrs. Cantine, Harrison, Zwemer and Pennings had raised$3,888 of the $5,000 target for Sioux County. Calverley Papers, Box 146, Document 69417, Box 119,Document 57015.

39. A retired diplomat noted that the missionary doctors were not always the best political analysts,which would seem to be supported by Dr. L. P. Dame's report from Riyadh, in 1921, on the Saudicampaign against Ibn Rashid of Ha'il, in which he stated ". . . the Ichwan's losses have been veryheavy and their government is almost bankrupt. The campaign has been a matter of months and evenif eventually it proves successful, it has been the means of diminishing Bin Saoud's prestige verymaterially. The Shereef of Mecca presumably sits on a much securer throne as a result." Ibid., Box149, Document 69833.

40. Zwemer, op. cit., p. 366.41. National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Consular Papers, Muscat, Muhammad Fazel to Depart-

ment of State, and reply, December 1897. The tract was published in Arabic and English.42. Ibid., Baghdad, Randolph to Department of State, April 1929, transmitting a report by Dr.

Paul W. Harrison.43. ". . . at the close of the first year [Bahrayn, 1892- 18931 over two hundred portions of

scripture had been sold." Total sales by the Arabian mission were stated to have risen to 2,464 by theend of 1899. Zwemer, op. cit., pp. 362-365.

44. More than once the Peninsular Arab who (e.g.) placed hospitality before religious duty at sundown,or at other times when the call to prayer was issued, was assumed to be a missionary prospect.




The single minded,unswerving eligiousconvictionof the ArabianMissionnonetheless added to the fundof respect earned by the mission doctorsandnurses.Who could not havemarveledat SarahHosman, the youngmedical

missionary with a wooden leg, who sought an American consul's inter-cession with Britishauthorities o gain access to innerOman,to preachtheGospel?45Access wasgained, andthe lengthy "tours"nto Hasa, QatarandTrucialOman, as well as to the BatinahCoast and theJabalAkhdar,seemedto be fulfillmentof the design for inner Arabia.

If the missionaries ell short of this, they performeda functionthat wasat least as important,the fostering of mutual esteem and respect.Dr. PaulHarrison, he antithesisof thegrim-visagedmissionary ealot, is the eloquentchronicler of this process.46The hardships endured by the missionariesinformed his conclusion, offered over a half-century ago, that:

. . . the Arab is a falcon. His lean, erect, sinewy body is built to endure fatigue,and thelines of his face tell stories of a life full of hunger and hardship,and innocent of mostof the amenitiesthatare a matterof course with US.47

Already in 1940 Dr. Harrison asserted that ". . . the center of life is no

longer the mosque but the oil derrick."48The wish was surely the father

of the assertion, but there is no doubt that the hardy missionary remainedas America's firmest link with Arabia, until Arabia's Petroleum Age.

Until oil, there was little else. American shipping was frequently seenin the roadsteads of Arabian Red Sea ports and Aden, between the centen-

nial of American Independence and the First World War. American influencein the era of the robber barons caused a dramaticrise in the export of hidesand skins, and much of the coffee trade was engrossed by the United

45. National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Consular Papers, Baghdad, Randolph to Department ofState, March 1924. The consul described her as "crippled."Those who knew of her trips on camelback,in 25-mile stages, thought otherwise.

46.Typical

ofthe items he entered in evidence was the following:

struggling through the heavy sand of Dubai to call on a friend perhaps five miles away, I stoppedat a fisherman's hut to beg a drink of water . . . in midsummer on the Pirate Coast, pedestriansneed drinks of water pretty frequently.

His designated host provided him not only with water, but also buttermilk and dates.

a loincloth was the wrinkled old fisherman's only covering, sincere hospitality his only crown,but he was one of the world's born kings.

Paul W. Harrison, Doctor in Arabia (New York: John Day, 1940), p. 17.47. Paul W. Harrison, The Arab at Home (New York: Crowell, 1924), p. 8. It was, in a way, a prose

version of Carlyle, who sang of a Beduin bride, Maisuna, sequestered in the splendor of Damascus:

The rustic youth, unspoiltd by airSon of my kindred, poor but free

Will ever to Maisuna's heartBe dearer, pamper'd fool, than thee

After hearing those pensive and reproachful strains, her husband was kind enough to send the girlback to Yemen.

48. Doctor in Arabia, p. 300.




StatesafterOttomanauthorities n Yemen placedit on sounderfooting inthe last yearsof the nineteenthcentury.49The latterdevelopmentwas in-strumentaln securingauthorizationof a consularagencyat Hudaydah,butit wasabolishedwithoutever being staffed.50 here was also some lobbyingby Americanbusinessmen orconsularrepresentationnJiddah,baseduponexports of petroleumproductsfrom Pennsylvania o the value of ?65,000between 1892 and 1897, but officialsanctionwas not forthcoming.51

Consular fficersweremostlyNew Englandmerchantswhoservedwithoutsalary,assigningsome prestige value to the position and perhapshopingfor some fringe benefits, such as the allocation of a typewriter. Thiscould be used for businessinvoices, for officialcorrespondencewas mini-mal. The unhealthyclimate-a Britishofficer claimedthat in Aden there

were more graves in the cemetery than beds in the barracks-causedfrequentchanges in personnel,but for the tougherappointees it providedblanketauthority o pursuecommercialnterestselsewherein Arabia,or onthe Africanshore.

Few were as frankas ConsulJones, who departed for the KarunRiverarea after writing". . . I trust that as I go awayfrom my officialdutiesin the furtherance f American radeand nterests,myleave maybe themorereadily granted."52The dispatch caused no alteration in the course of

Americandiplomacy.The firstactivityof a partiallypoliticalnatureengagedin by anAmerican

consularrepresentativeoccurredduringthe Spanish-AmericanWar.Learn-ing that an Englishcollier was loadingcoal for the Spanishfleet at Perim,Consul Cunninghamsought enforcement of neutralityprovisions by theBritishauthorities.In the end, he was compelled to purchasethe coal onhis own account.His sense of participationn greatevents mayhave beenheightenedwhen, in case there was any doubt of the outcome of the con-

flict, he received inquiriesfrom an Americancompanyin Cubaseeking asource of coolie labor.That was in December 1899. Prior to that, at two-monthintervals, he

requested (a) an allowanceof 12 rupeesmonthlyfromApril to Novemberfor apunkah wallah to stir the stiflingair in his office; (b) a transfer-thefirst ever requested; and, (c) leave to explore inner Arabia to escape

49. R. J. Gavin, Aden underBritish Rule 1839-1967 (London: C. Hurst, 1975), pp. 131, 186. TheTurks could always be counted on to help the coffee trade. Earlier, when muftis and physicianscondemned the practice of drinking coffee because ". . . tumultuous recreations in coffee housesscandalized the strict votaries of the Koran," Selim I ". . . had recourse to an argument very usualwith Sultans, and proved the virtues of coffee by hanging two Persian doctors who had asserted it wasinjuriou s to health." The Araband His Country., p. 2 1.

50. National Archives (Washington, D.C.), Consular Reports, Aden, Dispatch of August 13, 1895.51. Ibid., Dispatch of April 1897.52. Ibid., Dispatch of May 8, 1889. He returned on January 25, 1890.



AMERICAAND THE ARABIANPENINSULA 417

". . this uninteresting circular heap of Aden." The punkahwallah wasauthorized, and Cunningham stuck it out until ] 902.53

In Muscat, the presence of a sovereign ruler provided ceremonial eventsand an occasional raid from the interior to relieve the tedium. Best

of allwas the Fourth of July. In 1880 Consul Maguire combined the nationalday observances with the presentation of his credentials. After he had de-parted the Sultan's palace, he noted that the Sultan commanded that theAmerican ensign be hoisted on the Jalili Fort and saluted with 21 guns.After this:

. . . I then hoisted my flag on the Consulate; this was a signal for all vessels in theharbor, Arab, French and English to dress ship. All forts in Muscat were dressed and on theSultan's man-of-war, which was gaily decked out with flags, he flew the American ensign

all day.54

Maguire faithfully recorded the presents received from the Sultan, and theirvalue.55He was more meticulous in his accounts than he was sophisticatedin his political reporting, an example of which stated that

the extent of His Majesty's dominions is practically limited by the distance at whichhe can enforce his authority.56

The end-of-century permutations of Manifest Destiny sent Americans off

to rescue Filipinos from Spanish colonialism and then from themselves, toopen doors in China and to discover another frontier on the Klondike.But there were no assignments for the Rough Riders or the Great WhiteFleet in Arabia. Official interest in Arabia diminished to the vanishing point,not to recover until World War I was history.57

It is possible that postwar American involvement in Arabia was shapedby the fact that the King-Crane Commission did not visit Arabia. It wasproposed that the Americans, as part of an Inter-Allied Commission, should

leave Basrah in mid-September 1919 and visit Peninsular ports in thecourse of a voyage to Port Said.58Neither the Inter-Allied Commission nor

53. Ibid., Dispatches of July 1898; January, March, May and December 1899.54. Ibid., Muscat, Dispatch of July 5, 1880.55. They were a gold ruby ring ($80), black broadcloth ($35), attar of roses ($15), and coffee cup

holders "with filigree." All but the attar of roses were sent to the Department of State.56. Ibid., August 1, 1881.57. A "worker-missionary"and his wife settled in Yemen in 1905, and five years later Consul Moser,

at Aden, was authorized to make an inquiry into the circumstances of his death, which he did in some-thing of an epic journey. See Richard H. Sanger, The Arabian Peninsula (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1954), p. 243.58. Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission. An American Inquiry in the Middle East(Beirut: Khayat's 1963), p. 43. The Americans earned the gratitude and respect of Amir Faysal andthe Hijaz delegation, which might have formed a chapter in relations with the Arabian Peninsulahad not the Hashimites been compelled to move elsewhere a few years later. Ibid., pp. 75, 123. TheAmerican Consul at Aden described the situation in colorful terms- ". . . Sherif Hussein has beenencouraged to a state of political megalomania that is becoming a real liability to British prestige inArabian affairs-a sort of political Frankenstein as one might say." National Archives (Washington,D.C.), Consular Reports, Aden, Dispatch of January 1921.




the voyage came to pass, but the interest of Charles R. Crane waspiqued.59His private visits resulted in the beginnings of American involve-

ment in development, the underwriting of Arabs to study in America, (notedabove), and of the advisory services of the ubiquitous engineer, KarlTwitchell.

This was prior to the discovery of oil in the Peninsula, but already in

1920 oil was seeping into official dispatches. The American consul at Adenurged initiatives in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, because of the ". . . in-calculable importance of the establishing of American control in such pos-sible oil-fields of the world as have not been pre-empted." He hoped thatan American company would send ". . . an expert quietly to investigate."60It was to be expected that when Crane and Twitchell visited Yemen in 1927,

British authorities in Aden should be convinced that they were oilprospectors.61

But American entry into Arabian oil exploration occurred far across thePeninsula, in Bahrayn, with the assignment of a concession in 1930. Con-cessions were also granted to American interests in Saudi Arabia and Kuwaytin the prewar period. In recent years American companies have secured

concessions, have gone from exploration into production in severalshaykhdoms of the Southern Gulf, and have even obtained the inside track

in any race to usher Dhufar into the Petroleum Age.62The Americans entered into petroleum development in mainland Arabia

on a scale befitting a continental people. Their British competitors seemedunwilling to move much beyond the sight of salt water. The Americansasked for a half of Saudi Arabia-and more-as a concession area. Whenthey received it in 1933, the British Minister in Jiddah was thunderstruck.But it was more than the size of the concession, as a participant in thenegotiations, St. John Philby, suggested.63King 'Abd al-'Aziz saw character-istics in American frontier egalitarianism which related directly

to his ownconcept of rule, as Shaykh al-Shuyi?kh,and to his accessibility to his people.

59. It was further stimulated by contact with Moser (see note 57) in China in the early 1920s, whenCrane headed the diplomatic mission there.

60. Ibid., Dispatch of September 15, 1920. He described Yemen as "the richest of all Arabianprovinces", but his successor's request to visit the interior was refused on grounds of expense, in-accessibility and commercial unimportance. Ibid. dispatches of January 192 1,January 1923 and responseof March 6, 1923. American fascination with this terra incognita was a constant factor until diplomaticrelations were established after World War II.

61. Ibid., Dispatch of October 27, 1927. A brief reconnaissance of coastal Yemen was made byAmerican geologists prior to Crane's initial visit, but it was half-hearted and inconclusive. About thattime Amin Rihani, the Arab-American writer, visited interior Yemen, and in 1933 occurred the firstvisit by a professional American academician, the anthropologist, Carleton Coon. In connection withCrane's discussions with the Imam, Park, the Consul at Aden, visited Sana'a in 1928.

62. ForeignRelationsof the United States 1946, VII, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1969)pp. 66-67. Robert G. Landen, Oman Since 1856.' Disruptive Modernization in a Traditional ArabSociety (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 407.

63. H. St. J. B. Philby, American Oil Ventures (Washington: The Middle East Institute, 1964),pp. 125-127. Philby added another key factor-Britain's ". . . partiality for the Sharifiancause."



AMERICAAND THE ARABIANPENINSULA 419

The contrastwith Britishprotocol and imperialtradition, n those days atleast, was stark.

Before WorldWarII, then, two of the threemutual nterestswhichcom-prise the basisfor Americanrelationswith Arabia

were taking form.Thesewere development -broadly defined- and the productionof petroleum.The linkbetweenthe two is inextricablenow-development of non-oilpro-ducingYemen is basedlargelyuponremittances rom anemigre work forceemployedin OAPEC countriesof the ArabianPeninsula.

But thosemutual nterestsweredimlyperceived hen,andthethirdmutualinterest-national security-was an even more ambiguousproposition.In1939, Secretaryof State Hull reachedback to 1936 for a report statingthat ". . . the development of Americaninterests does not warrant he

establishmentof any sort of official representationat Jedda,"to supporthis negativerecommendation o PresidentRoosevelt on the subject.How-ever, strongrepresentation romthe Fieldfamilyresultedin the accreditingof the Minister in Cairo,Judge Bert Fish, to the court of King 'Abd al-'Aziz in 1940. A residentcharge 'affaireswasassignedn 1942.64

Thatreportof 1936, dustedoff andused in 1939, contrastssharplywitha dispatchfrom New Delhi to Washington n 1942, advisingthat Britishauthorities in India had learned that the Sultan of Muscat and Oman

". . . was concerned with the unheraldedarrivalat Salalahof four em-ployees of the Pan AmericanAirwayswho stated that they had come tomake the necessaryarrangements or groundfacilities."65

Air routes and facilitieswere quicklyauthorizedfor Americanmilitaryaircraftby the Sultanate,as they hadbeen previouslyby SaudiArabia.Butin 1942 the more pressingconcern was a possibilityof air attack on theoil installationsof Bahraynand the EasternProvince,the latterprotectedby a few Saudi soldiers armed only with rifles. An even graver threat

64. ForeignRelations . . . 1939, IV, p. 827. At the time, Knabenshue, Minister in Iraq and mostexperienced of American diplomats serving in the Middle East, strongly recommended the establishmentof formal diplomatic relations, to ". . . please the King and American interests concerned, and en-hance our prestige in the Near East." He also cited ". . . recent interest displayed in that country byGermany and Japan." US recognition had been extended to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in1931. See also W. A. Williams, America and the Middle East: Open Door Imperialismor EnlightenedLeadership? (New York: Rinehart, 1958), pp. 44-49. This period is covered very effectivelyby John A. DeNovo, op. cit., pp. 360-365. The delegation which presented credentials atRiyadh in 1941, when Kirk replaced Fish in Cairo, flew via Baghdad and Bahrayn, and included afuture ambassador to the Kingdom, Raymond A. Hare. The Baghdad-Bahrayn leg of the journeytook the DC-3 through a raging shamal, with dust so thick that neither wings, ground nor Gulf

could be seen until minutes before landfall was made at Bahrayn. The delegation was given its ownencampment in the desert outside the capital, and its own kitchen. It was late spring, and visits weremade between encampments in pleasant weather-Najd at its loveliest. After admiring, and therebyreceiving several gazelles, the delegation responded with fear and ambiguity to the question put tothem at the camel parade-"Do you like white camels?" The presentation of credentials wentsmoothly, the only untoward incident occurring when a translator, overawed by the presence of'Abd al-'Aziz, broke and ran away.

65. Foreign Relations . . . 1942, IV, p. 531. Salalah was described as ". . . a retreat where theSultan had in the past often sought refuge from the British."




was perceived to be an invasion of the oil fields, should the situation worsenin the Fertile Crescent. American planners urged that every provision bemade to keep CASOC and BAPCO "on stream" in the event that oil in-stallations in Palestine, Iraq and Iran were lost.66

It was asserted that CASOC had invested a $200,000 "denial"programto thwart German paratroopers and Italian commando forces. The programmay have been devised to justify denying entry to Captain Bale, theBritish demolitions expert, who was temporarily in Bahrayn. But the threatwas taken seriously, and CASOC authorities insisted that any decision on"denial" activities, or an evacuation of American personnel, must involvethe participation of the Saudi government.

Out of this trying period came the dawning realization among the allies

that Great Britain had responsibility for defense of the Gulf region, but couldnot carry it out without invading Saudi Arabia. Consideration was given todispatching an American military mission to train Saudi anti-aircraft bat-teries. Was this the genesis of an arms transfer policy?

In the midst of America's involvement in global war, Saudi Arabia andother countries of the Arabian Peninsula were, to paraphraseNeville Cham-berlain, distant countries with which we were not concerned. This surely musthave been the attitude of officials and legislators, nettled by the suggestion

that King 'Abd al-'Aziz's wartime loss of income from the pilgrimage,partially covered by advance royalties from the oil company, should be fullymade up from Lend-Lease Funds. Use of Saudi air space and the prospectof securing "other facilities", as cited in early 1943 by Dean Acheson toLend-Lease Administrator Stettinius, were not especially profound argu-ments, although the fact that Saudi Arabia was "the only major politicalunit in the Near East not eligible" could have been unsettling.67

Stronger motivation was on the way. In June 1943, as the combat zones

widened in the Pacific and the armed forces of the United States and herallies expended fuel at aprodigious, unprecedented rate (as did the industrialplant which supported them), Arabia took on a new significance to theWestern democracies. Writing to President Roosevelt on behalf of the JointChiefs of Staff, Admiral Leahy stated that the United States was confrontedwith the prospect of a supply of crude oil "from indigenous production"which was insufficient to meet existing and projected requirements.

66. Ibid.,p. 576 ff. California Arabian Standard (CASOC) later became ARAMCO. BAPCO is theBahrain Petroleum Company.

67. Foreign Relations . . . 1943, IV, pp. 854-955. The American administration had refused toextend financialassistance to Saudi Arabia, on the basis of a commitment to deliver petroleum products,in 1941. At the time a severe drought had compounded the problems caused by the loss of pilgrimageand customs duties. Secretary of the Navy FrankKnox advised President Roosevelt on May 20, 1941,that he ". . . had an investigation made of the oil produced in Saudi Arabia and find that its qualityis not suitable for Navy use." But the proposal envisaged using American production, and eventualreimbursement through taking oil, royalty free, from the EasternProvince. ForeignRelations . . . 1941,III, pp. 624-637.



AMERICA AND THE ARABIAN PENINSULA 421

Leahy called for all measures necessary to achieve an ideal which would,three decades on, be described as "energy independence." But the JCSassessment was that the gravity of the situation warranted an entirely newdeparture in crude oil acquisition. The Reconstruction Finance Corporationshould secure a controlling interest in the American oil concession in SaudiArabia. While recognizing the near-term and future importance of Arabian

crude oil supplies for the West, Cordell Hull and the Director of the Officeof War Mobilization, James F. Byrnes, were convinced that the Americanoil industry was the best agency for developing the Arabian oil industry.That was enough to satisfy President Roosevelt on the subject.68 But the

JCS memorandum had a part in bringing President Roosevelt and King'Abd al-'Aziz together aboard USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake, on

February 14, 1945.69

With victory in Europe at hand and as the ring closed upon Japan, peopleof what would come to be known as the Third World came to have-how-ever briefly-a new perception of America. Diplomats and oilmen whoserved in Arabia in the late 1940s have said "we were the fair-haired boys"which was accurate albeit (for the time) ethnocentric. The Americans werestill the new people, and the Fourteen Points which had bestirred ImamYahya to write President Wilson in 1918, remained a valid legacy. To this,

and to a more generalized acceptance of America's anti- (or at least non-)imperialistic credentials, was added some vague expectation that the wondersworked by wartime industry were transferable to peacetime production.

Consul Clark journeyed from Aden to Sana'a n 1945, and upon his returngave his version of the new perception. The ruling family, he reported:

. . . franklysaidthey hadknown for many years the Yemen has vastnatural esourcesto be developed but had so feared the imperialistic esigns of the greatpowers who hadoffered help [thatj they preferredto remainbackward nd isolated. They had long be-lieved thatthe only nationthey couldrely on for disinterestedhelp was the UnitedStatesandnow thatits worldleadership o maintain he rightsof smallnationswasassured heywouldwelcome sucheconomicandculturalassistanceas it couldgive.70

King 'Abd al-'Aziz made the point rather differently, when it was suggestedin 1947 that the World Bank was a better source of development loans than

68. Ibid., pp. 921-925. The most thorough scholarly exposition of this period is by Malcolm C.Peck, "Saudi Arabia in United States Foreign Policy to 1958: A Study in the Sources and Determinantsof American Foreign Policy," a dissertation

prepared at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy(1970), the publication of which would fill many gaps in knowledge and understanding of Saudi-Ameri-can relations.

69. ForeignRelations . . . 1945, VIII, pp. 2-3. See also W. A. Eddy, F.D.R. Meets Ibn Saud (NewYork: American Friends of the Middle East, 1954).

70. The Yemenis claimed to support the Allied cause, but ". . . had not declared war because theydid not wish to send a representative to the San Francisco Conference, as had the other ArabNations. One said he regarded a war declaration without active participation as hypocritical." ForeignRelations . . . 1945, VIII, p. 1313.



422 THE MIDDLE EASTJOURNAL

the US Export-Import Bank. Saudi Arabia, he said, would not be "inter-

nationalized," by which he meant that he preferred to do business with andbe indebted to the United States than to other countries or internationalinstitutions.71

But the Americans were not ready for the special relationship suggestedby such overtures. Beyond the boardrooms of the international oil industryand the Near Eastern division of the Department of State, there was, at theend of World War II, little awareness of or concern for the assessment thatSaudi Arabia's oil resources constituted ". . . a stupendous source of stra-tegic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history." TheAmerican concession, it was asserted, would be lost unless the governmentwas ". . . able to demonstrate in a practical way its recognition of this

concession as of national interest by acceding to the reasonable requests ofKing Ibn Saud." Yet the American capacity for exerting influence in theMiddle East was "hopelessly inadequate."72

If Arabian oil was not yet an established, long-term mutual interest, itcould hardly be expected that the United States government would mani-fest enthusiasm over participation in Arabian economic development. Vir-tually all American activity in the area was privately sponsored. KarlTwitchell, whose association with Yemen in the 1920s has been noted, did

important preliminary work in Saudi Arabia in the following decade.73He also participated in the US Department of Agriculture's wartime mis-sion to Saudi Arabia, the official view of which was that it was an inexpensivemeans of lessening the King's ". . . inevitable disappointment over thisgovernment's decision not to extend financialassistance to Saudi Arabia."7

After the war the most important source of development assistance, tech-nical or non-technical, and dealing with a range of requirements from basicinfrastructure to "socialengineering" became ARAMCO.75Thatcontribution

will continue to be forthcoming in the altered circumstances brought about

71. ForeignRelations . . . 1947, V, p. 1330.72. ForeignRelations . . 1945, VIII, pp. 45-46. That capacity was limited, in the writer's view to:

"(a) Note-writing by the Department of State; (b) Propaganda regarding the high principles to whichwe claim to adhere; (c) Government loans made on a commercial basis and repayable in dollars." Thememorandum nearly coincided with the resignation of the officer in the Department of State's NearEastern division ". . . because of his feeling that he is unable to do anything constructive and of hisunwillingness longer to assume responsibility for the protection of American interests in that country."

73. See Twitchell's own informative Saudi Arabia: With an Accountof the Development f Its NaturalResources Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953). Also Sanger, op. cit., passim.

74. Statement by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, ForeignRelations . . . 1941, III, p. 658.75. ARAMCO's publications have added greatly to the Western fund of knowledge ofArabiaand Islam.

Thorough familiarity with the Peninsula allowed one oil company official to evaluate a geographicalstudy by writing ". . . his explanation of the climate of the Middle East gave me an uneasy feeling thathe had put it together on the basis of partially understood discussions with experts." Calverley Papers,Box 234, Document 87017. Mining engineers developed into archeologists in Dhahran, and geologistswere transformed into historians. See Colonel Dickson's comments on the researches of one"petroscholar", Thomas C. Barger, in H. R. P. Dickson, Kuwait and Her Neighbors. (London: GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1956), pp. 79-81.




by the petrodollarrevolution. But the establishmentof a Joint EconomicCommission,a government-to-government rchestration ideally)of tech-nology transfersand petrodollarflow, contrastsstarklywith Americanre-luctanceto become involvedin Arabia, ittle more thantwo decades ago.76The survivors of that small, special but essentially uninfluentialbreed ofAmericans, he Arabistsof the 1940s, must havevery mixedthoughtsaboutAmericanentrepreneurswho seek theirservicesin RiyadhandJiddah-andin Doha, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah,Muscatand Kuwayt-in 1976. Soon KhorFakkanand Nizwa will be found in the gazetteerof Americancommercialone-upmanship.

National securityconcernswere responsible for SaudiArabian nterests,in 1946, in obtaining the "best conditioned U.S. surpluses" rom storage

in Egypt.77 t was a modest request. Prince Sayf al-Islam'Abdallah ofYemensoughtmuchmorewhenhe visitedWashington year ater. 8NeitherArabgovernmentwas satisfiedwith the Americanresponse. King 'Abd al-'Aziz,at least, hadsome leverage.

As the United Statesmoved by some inexorableprocess to ever greatercommitmentsandresponsibilities, acilitiessuch as the AirTransportCom-mand Base at Dhahranassumeda new importanceto militaryand policyplanners.The price for keeping Dhahran open, which included a small

trainingmission, was not high, and the King was prepared to use it as abargaining ounter.Then the rushof events in Palestinethreatened o over-whelm all else in Americanrelationswith the Arab world. Not only wasthere concern over the availabilityof militaryfacilities, but fear for theARAMCOconcession,expressedso starkly n 1945, was rekindled.79

The situationwas stated with characteristic irectnessby the Minister toSaudiArabia, . RivesChilds, nprefacinga dispatchwiththe words". . . ifour support of Palestinepartitionwere not the excessive incubus t is in all

our dealings. . "80At this crucial juncture the United States was the unexpected-and

unintended-beneficiary of Britishpolicy. Just over two yearsearlier, the

76. The formula for securing development assistance differs in countries which do not produce oil,as is suggested by Charles Issawi's statement that ". . . with very minor improvements the transportsystem of Yemen remained unchanged until the early 1960s, when the Soviets completed portinstallations at Hodaida, the United States laid a main road linking Ta'izz, Mokha and San'a,and the Communist Chinese built another road between San'aand Hodaida." The EconomicHistory of theMiddle

East 1800-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 340.77. ForeignRelations . . . 1946, VII, pp. 638-741.78. ForeignRelations . . . 1947, V, pp. 1344- 1345. For contrast, see the statement by Alfred L.

Atherton, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and African Affairs, on the Saudi Arabian-Americandefense relationship in Department of State Bulletin, March 22, 1976, pp. 377-381.

79. See above, note 71. In the same dispatch of August 1945, it had been noted that ". . . bothArabs and Jews are becoming more restive in Palestine and disorder may break out at any time whichmight spread throughout the Arab world."

80. Dispatch dated February 9, 1948. ForeignRelations . . . 1948, V, part 1, pp. 217-223.




imperial recessional was moving at double time when His Majesty's Govern-ment informed the American ambassador that:

1. Britain in future can not depend upon Middle Eastern oil for strategic purposes, and2. Britain's interest is increased, therefore, in Latin American oil resources.81

By 1948, however, a more forceful British approach to the Middle East wasin evidence.

In Saudi Arabia, British policy was manifested by a draft treaty similarin most respects to the ill-fated treaty of Portsmouth between London andBaghdad. Provision was made for a Joint Defense Board, and referencesabounded to "essential strategic installations"manned, maintained, and quiteclearly controlled by British personnel. Saudi Arabia was envisioned by the

treaty's authors as a British place d'armes.Washington tended to emphasize wartime solidarity with the United King-dom, until King 'Abd al-'Aziz rejected what he described as a "humiliating"treaty. Then a mood which had taken form in Riyadh took hold in Washing-ton. It was manifest in an exchange between the King and Minister Childs,in which 'Abd al-'Aziz expressed his friendship for the British but insistedthat ". . . they could not always be trusted, and reverted to the thoughtthat they might egg on the Hashemites to adventures in western SaudiArabia."82

Childs then asserted the American government's unqualified support ofthe territorial integrity and political independence of Saudi Arabia. He as-sured the King that:

. . . if he had at any time any apprehension with reference to British-Hashemite de-cisions he had only to communicate them to my government for necessary appropriateactions, and I could assure him we meant what we said.His Majesty's eyes sparkled and he said: 'I have no doubt about that'. I have rarely seenhim in so pleasant a mood.

Processes of linkage and interpretation, long atwork between SaudiArabiaand the United States, now involve Americans with virtually the entireArabian Peninsula. The generalizations come less easily. They involve at-titudes, values and aspirations as much as questions of crude oil prices andpurchasing power. Cultural sensitivity and social responsibility are in-creasingly important. Technological skill and political acumen will not bythemselves maintain mutualities of interest where they now exist. As theUnited States moves beyond its 200th year of independent nationhood,

the past falls short in so many ways of providing an acceptable prologueto future relationships with the Arabian Peninsula.

81. ForeignRelations . . .1945, VIII, p. 58.82. See above, note 79.

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America and the Arabian Peninsula the First Two Hundred Years

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