The Baluch Role in the Persian Gulf during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

What is it about?

We agree that Baloch presence in the Gulf and throughout the Indian Ocean was closely historically and politically connected with military, piracy, and measures taken by the British authorities against slave trade during the nineteenth century. Starting from the nineteenth century, the level of influence on trade routes controlled by Muslim merchants in the Gulf and in the Indian Ocean was high. The growing geo-strategic importance of the Indian Ocean as a watering highway was soon to becoming the focal point of world politics, making the region a new centre of world affairs. The promotion of trade and its influence has been not only a source of complex relationships between different people and different cultures and religions, but also played an important role in searching for peace among all the littorals of the Gulf coast.

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Why is it important?

The major motivations to Baluch movements were originated from environmental issues as well as from socio-economic conditions in their land. These conditions implied numerous consequences such as the expansion of lawless habits throughout their region, enslaving by external powerful groups, and the progressive creation of new roles in the Persian Gulf region such as the military one. Very little has been published about these socalled “diasporas communities”. For a long time available literature, not generous at all on this particular topic, did portray the Baluchis as a monolithic group of people who migrated in search of a better life.

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