Gulf maritime Arabs were specialised traders, not pirates

Evidence

Importantly, it would be incorrect to remember these chiefs and powerful alliances as pirates. They were an economically specialised and ethnically distinct coastal population who had a long history of regionally specific conflict that followed rules of engagement that was generations old. — Robin Alexander Plant, Discuss the Relationship Between…, 9

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ interest in how imperial powers recode local practices as moral transgression to justify intervention.
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘pirate’ meant in the Gulf context versus a distinct coastal political economy with its own laws of engagement.
• DEEPTHINKING: The reframing of a whole category of people from criminal label to legitimate polity is a paradigm shift that undermines the standard imperial historiography.