279. Partition: How Dubai Almost Became Part of India (Part 2)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William DeRimple. And we continue our miniseries with Sam DeRymple discussing his rather excellent five partitions that reshaped modern Asia. And in this episode, which I think is actually one of the most intriguing of all of the chapters that you've covered in this history, is the history of the Arabian Peninsula, which honestly you would not put together with the Indian Raj at all. So let's talk about this because a century ago, a large part, and we're talking about Oman, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait were legally part of India.

Sam De Rimple. discuss and why don't we know this? Yes, why why is this forgotten? How come that none of us knew it? It's been kind of forgotten and I think each of the nation states involved, be it India, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, has kind of written over this.

And it was really forgotten until this guy called James Onley, this professor and archivist was hired by the Qatari government to create what's known as the Qatar Digital Library, which is really good and anyone should go online, anyone who's doing research. It's one of the best archives out there. I got lost for weeks in that archive. It is extraordinary.

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