ABSTRACT
The arbitration in the dispute over the French flags at the court in The Hague having concluded in her favour in 1904, Great Britain was able to make good the ‘international legitimacy’ of her influence in Oman and put an end to the French alternative. By the same token, the argument of the fight against the slave trade was no longer of use to British strategy. The slogan of the succeeding period was the struggle against the arms trade: a fresh pretext for tightening control of shipping in the region. But basically it was a matter of stressing her domination there, the better to integrate the region into British imperial strategy throughout the Orient. And to that end, rather than officially declaring the British protectorate over the regimes then in place, it was preferable to keep them weak and divided and in a state of vassalage in relation to the colonial power manoeuvring in the wings. This was the ‘British lake’, a stagnant sheet of water from every point of view.
