Military dominance enabled treaty-making that converted violence into legal hegemony

Evidence

Therefore, once military dominance was achieved Britain was able to introduce the General Treaty of 1820. In doing so, Britain began the process of achieving political and economic hegemony in the Gulf. They justified their use of violence through categorising the maritime violence of those Arab lineages that posed too great a threat to Britain’s global trade as piracy and plunder. — Robin Alexander Plant, Discuss the Relationship Between…, 15

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ thesis that moral and legal labels are class/identity/power signaling: here the label ‘pirate’ is the mechanism of imperial legitimacy rather than dress.
• SEED: Piece: how the 1820 treaty template became the blueprint for the later Trucial States and the modern UAE’s legal genealogy.