The Pirates of Trucial Oman. -

London: MacDonald & Co. 1966.. FIRST EDITION. 8vo. (22 x 14 cm). pp.256. Publisher's original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the unclipped pictorial dust-jacket 7 black & white plates including frontispiece of Captain T. Perronet Thompson, and 5 maps. Light wear and soiling to dust-jacket, contents clean, generally very good. From the cover: "In his preface to the book, Lieutenant-Colonel H. Moyse-Bartlett describes The Pirates of Trucial Oman as a story set in Napoleonic times, though outside the main stream of history. It deals with four naval and military expeditions and a tragic episode in the career of a certain colourful Captain T. Perronet Thompson � sailor, soldier, economist and politician. The Treaty which he drafted, interpreted and expounded, laid the foundation of Britain's strange relationship with the modern sheikhdoms of the Trucial coast. Captain T. Perronet Thompson was born in 1783 at Hull. After a notable academic career at Cambridge, he entered the Navy but subsequently served in the Army during the Napoleonic wars. At twenty-five he was appointed Governor of Sierra Leone. The humane and progressive attitudes which he tried to translate into action � befriending the natives and liberating the slaves � were not acceptable to the authorities, who recalled him. His promising military career ended in a disastrous expedition against the Bani Bu Ali tribe, for which he was court-martialled. This work, at once scholarly and readable, contains vivid descriptions of encounters between the pirates who were the curse of this coast and the British sailing ships of Nelson's day. As a study in miniature of the problems of British empire-rulers, The Pirates of Trucial Oman is an important contribution to military and political history. It helps to explain the present embattled situation in the Middle East and provides a useful lesson for those charged with the conversion of an empire and the evolution of a new system of international relationships."