ABSTRACT
In the remarkable trade expansion of the Indian Ocean region, stimulated by the increasing absorption of the triangular Zanzibar-Muscat-western India commercial network into the international capitalist system, the resurgence of the Albusaidi-controlled ports of Muscat and Zanzibar was to lead inevitably to a confrontation with the British authorities. But Britain, which had shown a preference for non-intervention in Omani affairs after 1810, was now prompted firstly by the Omani-American Treaty of 1833 and secondly by regional and global developments to sit up and include the Omani ruler in its regional equation. With Muscat figuring prominently in the political strategy of British India, the economic threat posed by the Omanis and their associates at various points of the triangular commercial network was no less significant than strategic considerations. To maintain its hegemony in the Indian Ocean, Britain was compelled to deal decisively with both the political and the economic facets of the Omani challenge.
