European withdrawal from Gombroon intensified Sunni Arab maritime conflict.

Evidence

In fact, it was the ending of Persian dominance in the Gulf, as well as British and Dutch abandonment of their trading posts at Gombroon in the mid to late eighteenth century that led to the intensification of conflict between Sunni Arab maritime ‘warriors and coastal inhabitants’.[xiv] Prior to this, Britain did not consider the Arabs to have any ‘forces of consequence’. — Robin Alexander Plant, Discuss the Relationship Between…, 8

Categorization

• CANDY: A neat counterintuitive tidbit: British and Dutch trade-post closures helped trigger Gulf conflict, not their arrival.