General Maritime Treaty of 1820

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The General Maritime Treaty of 1820 was initially signed between the rulers of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Great Britain in January 1820, with the nearby island state of Bahrain acceding to the treaty in the following February. Its full title was the "General Treaty for the Cessation of Plunder and Piracy by Land and Sea, Dated February 5, 1820".

The treaty was signed following decades of maritime conflict in the Gulf, with British, French, and Omani flagged ships involved in a series of disputes and actions that were characterized by officials of the British East India Company as acts of piracy on the part of the dominant local maritime force, the Qawasim.^[1] It was to lead to the establishment of the British protectorate over the Trucial States, which would endure until the independence of the United Arab Emirates on 2 December 1971.