A Special Relationship Between Britain and Saudi Arabia: the Future of Such Relationship - Research Paper Example

It was the military conquest that formed the background for the establishment of the Saudi state in the twentieth century and Britain was in the middle of it as it exerted the strongest political intervention in the Gulf during the period. This is due to British victory over the Ottoman Empire – a variable pivotal in the expansion of Saudi’s territory in Ha’il and Hijaz. After this, Britain was the main foreign power regulating the relationship of the newly emerging dominions of Ibn Sa’ud (the founder of Saudi Arabia) and its mandated territories in the north.

The Saudi-British Friendship Treaty was signed in 1915, wherein the British promised to protect the Saudi state against domestic and foreign foes, while Abdulaziz gave Britain trading privileges, as well as supervision of the development of the state’s foreign policy, arms supply and financial aid. The Treaty of 1915 would henceforth be scrapped in favour of a modified version in 1927, also called as the Treaty of Jeddah. The British government realized that the treaty entered into with Ibn Sa’ud was “patently inappropriate to the circumstances of 1926” In addition, London knew that Saudi Arabia could not be a British colonial protectorate like Kuwait, Bahrain, or the Trucial States and that to make the Islamic holy land part of the British Empire would alienate Muslims worldwide.

For Ibn Saud’s part, a revision of the previous treaty meant more than just a change in the perception of an admission of Christian power because the new treaty has had more practical purposes – that of arms supply and financial aid.