Geopolitics in the Maldives: Intersection of Foreign Relations and Internal Political Rivalries

This article connects the political science literature on small states and the historical coverage of trade in the Indian Ocean to identify a remarkable pattern in foreign relations management of Maldivian geopolitics. The long history of interaction with foreign powers since at least the fifteenth century shows how this small state has, historically as well as now vis-à-vis India, China and the Middle East, managed well to retain control and sovereignty as an independent nation. Rich experience in handling the challenges posed by competing geopolitical interests in the wider region partly explains this Maldivian success story. However, this article also brings out the role of constant internal political rivalry within the Maldivian elites. The resulting highly dynamic intersecting pattern identifies how different parties, fractions and certain strong personalities as competing stakeholders constantly attempt to retain or grab power through strategic alliances with foreign powers. Identifying this underlying pattern allows deeper analysis of the unique, literally liquid characteristics of Maldivian geopolitics and similar small-state scenarios.


Introduction
In early March 2024, news agencies including Agence France Press and The Hindu highlighted the ongoing geopolitical competition between India and China regarding the Maldives.They reported that the Indian Navy would open a strategic base for operational surveillance near this small nation of about 1,000 uninhabited and 200 inhabited coral islands, situated close to India.Sitting along a crucial maritime shipping line in the Indian Ocean, which also acted as a highway for Islam (Arnold, 1995: 195), the Maldives attracted medieval Arab travellers, including famously Ibn Battuta (Metcalf, 2009), but is now a geostrategic jewel, with global implications for power plays between several stakeholders.History shapes the present, also when it comes to the Maldives (Chatterjee, 2024), and evidently the same goes for geography when it manifests as geostrategic politics.The geostrategic location of the Maldives motivated academics to study how this micronation maintained relations with foreign powers while seeking to preserve its statehood.The almost continuous political existence of the Maldives as a 'Lilliput' figure (Sutton & Payne, 1993) has prominently been studied regarding early historical maritime activities in the Indian Ocean, focused on evolving patterns of global maritime trade (Chaudhuri, 1985;Hourani, 1951;Pearson, 2005;Prakash, 2012).There used to be little scattered material on the Maldives (Malten, 1983), described as perhaps 'the least known' (Maloney, 1976: 654) among Asian countries.The encyclopaedia edited by Esposito (1995) contains no separate Maldives entry but presents details under 'Indian Ocean Societies' (Arnold, 1995).More recently, international relations specialists have theorised the behaviour of small states (Mohamed, 2000), also in terms of authoritarianism and corruption (Misra, 2004b).Small states often need the protection of big neighbours (Misra, 2004b: 139) and have to be robust and circumspect in self-defence.Chatterjee (2024) portrays the Maldives as 'a study in contradictions', as it 'paradoxically managed to retain relative independence from European colonisation'.
While Chatterjee (2024) provides updated background facts, he ignores the role of Maldivian internal politics in this regard.Historically grounded research shows some awareness that small local entities, not just the respective authoritarian Maldivian ruler, contributed to shaping power relationships regarding sovereignty (Chowdhary, 2022).It makes sense to highlight that 'there is often collusion between the ruling authority and the upper levels of the society' (Misra, 2004b: 137), leading to corruption, but that phenomenon is observable everywhere.Theorising small states and their limited scope for internal opposition, Misra (2004b: 134) envisages a large extended family, with members linked together in multiple ways that bolster authoritarianism, which is certainly observable, historically, in the Maldives.However, while it seems correct to characterise the Maldives as 'perhaps the most homogeneous' of all South Asian states, Misra (2004a: 129) overlooks the internal power struggles of the Maldives when he depicts 'a singular nation where there is no dispute over racial traits, ethnicity, religion and collective memory.Secure in its identity, it has been able to cope effortlessly with various internal and external challenges as compared with others'.It seems premature to assume insularity as a watertight tool to preserve internal unity and to argue that the Maldives, like Bhutan, did not face internal threats to their sovereignty (Misra, 2004b: 136).
This article therefore picks up the challenge identified by Chowdhary (2022: 195) to fill the numerous gaps of knowledge and understanding about geopolitical realities in the Western Indian Ocean region.It focuses mainly on showing how the Maldivian rulers over time dealt with various challenges posed by a succession of various foreign powers in the region, prominently the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British.This article then digs deeper, offering also a systematic analysis of the complex historical facts regarding the internally volatile structures of the Maldivian ruling elites.It shows how their internal struggles, throughout history, had significant impacts on Maldivian geopolitics and the geostrategic ecosystem of the wider oceanic region.
Putting these two complementary elements together allows a richer understanding of two core components.First, how early trade and power relations in the Indian Ocean region were affected by an intricate interplay of wider geopolitical dynamics manipulated by various European powers.Considerable research already exists on that theme, as the references in Chowdhary (2022: 205-7) document.Second, the largely ignored internal political rivalries in the Maldives are added into the analysis.This approach, partly based on insider knowledge, shows specifically how power struggles within the Maldivian royal court became an additional crucial factor for explaining why and how Maldivian geopolitical relations were formed in the past, as well as being re-shaped in present times.
This necessarily interdisciplinary investigation, therefore, first scrutinises the role of skilful balancing in conducting Maldivian foreign relations in the interplay of foreign interventions and internal politics.Taking this analysis through the centuries into contemporary times, one identifies an underlying pattern unique to the Maldives.By bringing out how the internal political rivalry within local Maldivian politics also influenced its foreign relations towards the Portuguese, Dutch and British between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, a decolonising perspective shifts the researcher's gaze from the traditional focus on European powers towards the complex role of local voices and powers.This allows a more comprehensive understanding of the volatile dynamics of foreign relations, Maldivian geopolitics and their underlying links with local power dynamics.
The article proceeds broadly chronologically and first provides a wider overview of the Maldivian setting.It then addresses, in turn, the key dynamics related to Maldivian interactions with the Portuguese (Bell, 1931), Dutch (Bell, 1932) and British.Each part provides a contextual analysis, aiming to identify the key role played by Maldivian internal politics on these multi-level geopolitical interactions.The article then turns to the more recent struggles faced by the Maldives regarding ties with India, China and the Middle East.Here again, contemporary internal Maldivian politics, now within a democratic local setting, reflect ancient structures of competitive interplay between local, regional and wider geopolitical factors and stakeholders, identifying an intriguing pattern of historical continuity despite many ruptures.

Historical Background of Internal Diversity
The earlier relationships of the Maldivian rulers with indigenous rulers and monarchs of the Indian Ocean region are beyond the scope of this study.However, given the geographical realities, the interactions with certain local rulers in southern India, especially Kerala, and in Ceylon, cannot be ignored.They run parallel to the establishment of Portuguese, Dutch and British dominions along the Indian coast (de Silva, 2009: 174, 179, 199;Tajuddin et al., 2020Tajuddin et al., [1704Tajuddin et al., -1811]]: 49, 55), turning any relationships into multilateral arrangements rather than simple bilateral deals.
Before analysing the interplay of the two identified key components of Maldivian geopolitics, some inherent characteristics of the Maldives as a small island nation, the Maldivian local elite and the wider sociocultural and political connectedness of this small dot in the Indian Ocean are needed here.A major problem is population growth (Maloney, 1976: 670).While in 1992, the population was about 230,000 (Arnold, 1995: 195), by 2023, there were slightly over 500,000 citizens.The Maldives relied traditionally on fishing and trade activities.While there were only about 1,000 tourists annually in the 1970s (Maloney, 1976: 663), this is now an upmarket global tourism hotspot, with facilities on specific atolls, away from the local population, attracting over a million tourists annually.Since 2009, some guesthouses have operated in some local island communities, although conservative groups in this Islamic Republic, where all citizens are Muslims (Arnold, 1995), mostly Shafi'i Sunnis, expressed concerns, citing religious sentiments.
Typical for a South Asian country, the Maldives have an older history of Hindu and Buddhist presence (Chatterjee, 2014;Robinson, 2016).Islam was adopted in the Maldives in 1153 (Chatterjee, 2024), when the Buddhist ruler converted to Islam and ordered his subjects to follow his path (Maloney, 1976: 655).The Maldivian rulers called themselves 'Sultan ' and Pyrard de Laval (1887: 197) wrote that 'the king is feared and dreaded, and everything depends upon him'.Sultans and sometimes a Rani as female ruler (Metcalf, 2009: 272-4) were absolute rulers until the first constitution of 1932, while the post-1932 political system functioned like Weberian 'Sultanism without Sultans' (Misra, 2004b: 135), until the adoption of the 2008 constitution and the subsequent rise of political pluralism.The co-existence of a powerful ruler with various contenders for power, mostly family members, became a hallmark of Maldivian politics.Whenever some aspirants attempted to seize authority with the aid of foreign powers, the internal political rivalries further complicated geostrategic politics.
The Maldivian islands became the target of frequent raids from India and Ceylon, and many foreign sailors visited the island and/or got stranded there.Pyrard de Laval (1887: 208-9), the shipwrecked French traveller who sought refuge between 1602 and 1607, described Maldivian society as hierarchical, headed by the king and nobles.Colton (1995: 51) provided ethnographic insights into the Maldivian political elites.Claiming a special metaphysical status distinct from the rest of the population, they remained 'a politico-centric group', maintaining the idea that only high-ranking elites could rule the state.They operated in politics through dynastic identifications, defined through marriage and affinity.The Maldivian elites have been a major defining aspect of Maldivian politics, at least since the first Sultans in the twelfth century until the second republic in 1968 (Colton, 1995: 99).However, the Maldivian rulers frequently faced challenges from within the royal court (de Silva, 2009: 173).Rulers always had to be highly alert to external and internal challenges, making them highly skilled in geostrategic politics, reflected in observers' comments on Maldivian cleverness (Maloney, 1976: 671).
Rivalry within the court was also the most common reason for coups (Colton, 1995: 66;Nasheed, 2020: 19).The main trigger for this political instability seems to have been the ability of all Sultan-line descendants to vie for power.By ancient Maldivian custom, succession to the throne followed a matrilineal pattern, so that succession was vested primarily in the male offspring of the reigning monarch's sister.However, as shown in rich detail by Tajuddin et al. (2020Tajuddin et al. ( [1704Tajuddin et al. ( -1811]]), in some instances, Sultans were direct descendants of the deceased ruler, either sons or brothers.This indicates the potential for complex disputes over inheritance matters in the Maldivian royal court (Maloney, 1976: 659;Metcalf, 2009: 272).In the case of coups or rebellions, the ability to control Malé, the capital city, gave the victor in such succession struggles some legitimacy (de Silva, 2009: 173), epitomised in the term 'Sultan's Island' (Bell, 1882: 12).
However, the ruler's dependence on the loyalty of local elites, mostly his own relatives, put him in a delicate position (Colton, 1995: 75).In the nineteenth century, heightened political rivalry arose when these elites bolstered their influence through successful trade in the Indian Ocean (Nasheed, 2020: 20).Throughout, the balance of power among the Maldivian elites has been essential in determining who ultimately assumed internal control and was then able to act as the official Maldivian representative vis-à-vis foreign powers.Most importantly for the present article, thus, internal political contestation among these elites played a crucial role in shaping Maldivian engagements with other nations and foreign powers (Nasheed, 2020: 19).

Maldivian-Portuguese Relations and Internal Political Rivalry
The Portuguese, the first foreign power to establish itself militarily in the Indian Ocean region, sought to dominate international trade from the late fifteenth century onwards, especially during the sixteenth century (Pearson, 2008).As the Portuguese asserted their hegemony along the southern coast of India, the Maldives attracted their attention around 1507 (Maloney, 1976: 656).The tranquillity which had earlier dominated the Indian coastal regions was replaced by international power politics after the second Portuguese armada bombarded Calicut in Kerala in the early sixteenth century.Unable to subjugate the local population in Calicut, the Portuguese then established a naval base in Goa in 1558 (Panikkar, 1959: 39).The Maldives assumed further strategic significance for the Portuguese when ships from Southeast Asia began to restock in the Maldives rather than docking at the Malabar coast to avoid Portuguese brutality (de Silva, 2009;Fitzler, 1935-36).According to de Silva (2009: 174), the geostrategic importance of the Maldives had been acknowledged by the Viceroy of Portuguese India, who received instructions from the court of Portugal to maintain solid relations with the Maldivian Sultan (Bell, 1882: 27).
As gaining control over the Maldives became part of geostrategic plans to ensure total Portuguese control, several Portuguese officials were ordered to visit the Maldives to determine the scope for action, given the islands' unique spatial location.The Maldivian Sultan's decision to grant exclusive trading rights in the Maldives to a merchant from the Malabar coast (Bell, 1882: 26-7;Hogendorn & Johnson, 2011) alerted the Portuguese to competition from Indian rulers.Earlier, internal political rivalry in the Maldives, connected to Indian rulers, had become prominent when Sultan Ali IV was dethroned by Mohamed (called Kalhu Mohamed) with help from the Raja of Cannanore in Kerala in 1494 (Tajuddin et al., 2020(Tajuddin et al., [1704(Tajuddin et al., -1811]]: 32).After being in turn dethroned by Hasan VII, Kalhu Mohamed managed to re-secure his position with assistance from the Raja of Cannanore and the Portuguese in 1513 by offering annual payments in return (Tajuddin et al., 2020(Tajuddin et al., [1704(Tajuddin et al., -1811]]: 33).Since 1513, following the takeover of power by Kalhu Mohamed, the Maldives made annual payments to the Portuguese, until the reign of Sultan Ibrahim Iskander I between 1648 and 1687 (Tajuddin et al., 2020(Tajuddin et al., [1704(Tajuddin et al., -1811]]: 33-4).
Portuguese delegates first arrived in the Maldives in November 1518, when the Portuguese Viceroy in India dispatched four ships.When Sultan Kalhu Muhammad met the Portuguese naval commander, he promised the Portuguese a factory site, a certain sum of coir and half of the annual ambergris (grey amber) yield from the Maldives (de Silva, 2009: 176).The latter points to the economic attractions of naval trade in this rare, valuable substance produced by sperm whales, highly prized in the fragrance industry because of its unique scent characteristics.The economically relevant abundance of coir rope in the Maldives, a useful tool for the naval fleet, also attracted the Portuguese (de Silva, 2009: xiv, 5, 34, 174).Kalhu Muhammad agreed to permit the Portuguese to erect a stronghold after this visit, thereby using the Portuguese to weaken the influence of Ali Raja of Cannanore and Malabar merchants, who possessed geopolitical influence as well as exclusive trading privileges in the Maldives (Bell, 1882: 27;de Silva, 2009).
Another pertinent incident of domestic political rivalry is recorded by Tajuddin et al. (2020Tajuddin et al. ( [1704Tajuddin et al. ( -1811]]: 35-6).Sultan Hasan IX, who ruled from 1550 to 1552, the grandson of Sultan Kalhu Mohamed, embraced Christianity, leading to his departure to Portuguese Cochin in February 1552.There, with the assistance of the Portuguese, he dispatched a Portuguese fleet to Malé to facilitate the conversion and submission of other leaders.However, Maldivians intercepted the ship and killed all its occupants, while one of the leaders of the Maldivian defence force, Abu Bakr, was proclaimed Sultan.A third Portuguese expedition sent to the Maldives led to the death of Abu Bakr's successor Sultan Ali IV (de Silva, 2009: 178) and, in turn, to the Portuguese invasion of 1558.After this, the Maldives were ruled by the Portuguese on behalf of Hasan IX, but in 1573, they were expelled from the Maldives during an internal uprising (de Silva, 2009: 178, 179;Tajuddin, 2020Tajuddin, [1704Tajuddin, -1811]]: 37-42).
This short-term colonisation by the Portuguese was clearly facilitated by internal rivalry, at a high cost, leading to the temporary loss of Maldivian independence.Between 1558 and 1573, the brutal colonial rule made the internal economic situation worse, mainly owing to the tributes exacted (de Silva, 2009: 202-6;Tajuddin, 2020Tajuddin, [1704Tajuddin, -1811]]): 38).
Yet, even after 1573, the new Sultan agreed to deliver annual tributes in return for non-interference in Maldivian internal affairs and to avoid naval harassment.The wider background to the Portuguese expansionism directed towards the Maldives archipelago is that the Maldivian elites were divided into two groups, within the royal court, linked through family bonds and marriages.In the 1573 scenario, Kalhu Mohamed and Hasan IX both orchestrated coups against their ruling brothers with the help of the Portuguese to gain power.The annual Maldivian tributes to the Portuguese, however, were made for economic benefit rather than marking political affiliation or even subordination.
Kalhu Mohamed had used his political relations with the Portuguese to fend off Ali Raja of Cannanore.This logical realpolitik of foreign relations by Kalhu Mohamed offered the Portuguese an opportunity to expand their power over the Maldives, truly a win-win situation.Hence, during Kalhu Mohamed's reign, the relationship was one of vassalage, without taking away the sovereign status, but the Maldives had to make significant economic concessions to the Portuguese.Whether through colonisation or vassalage, however, the Portuguese were ultimately unable to maintain their power in the Maldives without some local elite support due to the dispersed nature of the islands.The Portuguese were willing to intervene in the Maldives when the time seemed favourable, during a period characterised by intensified internal political rivalry in the Maldives.Given the difficulties of controlling the islands and navigating the perilous reefs, it was imperative for the Portuguese to seek alliances with local political elites ready to assist them, with mutual benefit in terms of geostrategic politics as well as economic gain.

Maldivian-Dutch Relations and Internal Rivalries
While there was a hostile relationship between the Dutch as a rising power and the Portuguese as a declining force in the region, the Maldivian Sultans recognised the importance of this particular power dynamic to navigate their small country through these geopolitical rivalries.The earlier Portuguese invasion and the subsequent economic drain had left the Maldivian political elite wary of encroaching foreign powers.But the prevailing caution appears to have always been overshadowed by concerns regarding Maldivian local political rivalry.Consequently, intra-court rivalry compelled the Sultans to develop now progressively intimate associations with the Dutch.The mainly commercial nature of the Dutch approach towards the Maldives made them forego certain strategic advantages from having the Maldives under their control.Since they developed Indonesia as their main colony (Ricklefs, 2008), they required merely friendly relations, not close control through colonisation.
Clearly, trade was important to the Dutch, and it intersected with geopolitics.Maldivian cowries were a means of exchange and common currency in many parts of India, South China and Africa (Mohamed, 2005;Pyrard de Laval, 1887).These cowries became an important part of the Atlantic slave trade (Maloney, 1976: 658), attracting the Dutch East India Company towards the Maldives (Emmer & Gommans, 2020;Raben, 1996: 49).While Bengal remained the major trading hub for Maldivian cowries, several Dutch expeditions between 1685 and 1734 traded cowries directly with the Maldivians.However, they faced an uncooperative royal court and mercantile policies that gave them hardly any profit, since the Maldivian Sultan feared that close trade relations with the Dutch would turn into political encroachments (Raben, 1996: 51-2).In 1734, the Sultan offered the Dutch an exclusive contract in return for a vast amount of rice per year.The Dutch considered it not worth bearing such a burden, given that there were already alternative supplies of cowries (Raben, 1996: 54).
The Dutch, who also controlled Ceylon from 1658 to 1796 after having wrested it from Portuguese control (1597-1658), did not need to use force to establish recognition of their dominance over the Maldives.The Maldivian Sultans deliberately placed themselves under the protection of the respective dominant European power for at least two and a half centuries and courted its alliance (Bell, 1882(Bell, : 30, 1932: 240): 240).The Dutch never considered invading the Maldives due to the 'insalubriousness and perils of navigating through reefs' (Raben, 1996: 48) and were only marginally interested in the Maldivian islands (Bell, 1882: 124; Pyrard de Laval 1887: 282).After the Dutch conquest of Galle in southern Ceylon, letters sent to the Dutch show that the Maldivian Sultan sent annual embassies to the Dutch from 1645 onwards to maintain a cosy relationship against their common enemy, the Portuguese and other possible invaders (Bell, 1934: 52;Colton, 1995: 67;de Silva, 2009).It seems that Sultan Ibrahim Iskander I (reign 1648-87) unsuccessfully sought assistance from the Dutch against the Portuguese.While Bell (1932: 232) doubted that Maldivian leaders constantly offered tributes, the Dutch also sent tributes to the Maldivian Sultans.So, there was an exchange of mutual gifts.According to Bell (1882: 30), this Maldivian practice of dispatching embassies to the Dutch was maintained until the British period as a form of 'suzerainty', but Raben (1996: 54) negates Bell's position, depicting it as 'mutual courtesy', which seems more appropriate.
Despite pleas for help from Maldivians who were allied with the Sultan, the Dutch also did not intervene and exploit a strategically opportune moment when Ali Raja of Cannanore sacked Malé in 1753 and abducted the Sultan (Raben, 1996: 55).Instead, the Dutch waited until another king was proclaimed, without intervening.The coup had been orchestrated by the Prime Minister of the Sultan, who, according to Bell (1882: 32), was dissatisfied with the Sultan's reign.The rebel then allied with Ali Raja, offering him some Maldivian islands in return.One sees here another serious threat to Maldivian sovereignty, brought on by internal politics.Around this time, the French had a brief opportunity to intervene in Malé, when a Maldivian princess requested French military support after the coup in 1753 (Raben, 1996).However, the French military resided in Malé only briefly and was expelled (Tajuddin, 2020(Tajuddin, [1704(Tajuddin, -1811]]): 144).According to Bell (1882: 16), it was mainly the 'admirable position' of the Maldives that attracted the French to stay in Malé.
Overall, despite occasional communications, according to Hogendorn and Johnson (2011: 41-2), the Maldivian Sultans and their people remained all along wary of European traders and wanted Europeans to stay out of Maldivian waters.Despite this wariness, Bell (1882: 31) notes that the Sultans always encouraged foreign trade and sought to minimise restrictive mercantile policies, albeit on terms based on the Sultan's will.The trajectory of Maldivian foreign relations with the Dutch appears to have been significantly influenced by the events surrounding the 1753 coup.Subsequent to this pivotal historical episode, the Sultan made concerted efforts to forge stronger ties with the Dutch, particularly in opposition to local rivals.

Maldivian-British Relations and Internal Political Struggles
After the British took control of Ceylon in 1796 from the Dutch, the Maldivian Sultan, Hassan Nooraddeen I, wrote to the English Governor of Ceylon in 1798, expressing hope that the 'great friendship' between the British authorities in Ceylon and the Maldives would continue (Bell, 1882: 35), while Bell (1882: 17) treated this as a manifestation of the Sultan's free will, enabling the British to inherit 'suzerainty' over the Maldives from the Dutch.
There were continuing British concerns, also after British dominance in the Indian Ocean region had established, that Maldivian independence might still cause trouble (Nasheed, n.d.), as the British-Maldivian relationship remained 'undefined' (Bell, 1882: 125;Nasheed, 2020: 22).Official communications between the Maldivian Sultans and the British in the late 1700s and 1800s, as Bell (1882) found, almost always related to the treatment of foreign shipwrecks.Bell (1882: 38) recorded that Sultan Mohamed Imaaduddin addressed the British governor in Ceylon in amicable language in 1849, 1850 and 1855.This conveyed feelings of friendship, trust and honour, indicating the need for alliances and protection (Bell, 1882: 124).Closer scrutiny of these letters shows that the Sultan acknowledged Britain's superiority but did not intend to foster a close alliance.Similar to earlier relations with the Dutch, the Sultan requested British assistance against enemies, including internal political rivals.
At that time, the British were still far from intervening directly in Maldivian affairs.However, they made concerted efforts to seek the Sultan's consent to cartographic delineations of the Maldives, a typical act of colonial knowledge gathering, familiar to historians of South Asia (Guha, 2003).That project, between 1834 and 1836, was executed without explicit consent from the Sultan, who exhibited hesitance towards this project (Bell, 1882: 36-7).This indicates that the British were quietly expanding their control over the Maldives.Unlike for the Portuguese or the Dutch, there was no economic potential for the British in the Maldives, as by the time of the British dominance in the Indian Ocean, cowries and coir ropes were outdated assets.Hence, Bell (1882: 9, 17 and 20) highlighted the strategic value of the Maldives as a potential naval resupply point for the British Empire.
Following riots in Malé in 1886, the British intervened, as such domestic instability might attract other powers hostile to the British (Nasheed, 2020: 86-70).The trigger was the expulsion of all Borah merchants from the Maldives in 1886.This Indian Muslim trading community, originally from Bombay, had settled in Malé during the 1860s, and the Borahs were allied to the Kakaage dynasty (Nasheed, 2020: 82-3).The British now took strategic advantage of this political turmoil to interfere in Maldivian internal affairs and to expand British control by making the Maldives a protectorate in 1887.A vast literature proves that the British 'agreement' of 1887, a 'tardy' arrangement (Bell, 1934: 47), was not only about the British pledge to protect the Maldives in return for loyalty to the British Crown.It was mainly driven by political rivalry between two competing elite dynasties.In 1886, Sultan Ibrahim Nooraddeen had been dethroned by Sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen II, leading to his affiliation with Ibrahim Didi from the Athireege dynasty.Ibrahim Didi, Prime Minister for some time during the reign of Sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen II (1886-88), saw the solidifying influence of the Kakaage dynasty and sought to damage their commercial standing by targeting the Borahs.
Local Maldivian sources in the Divehi language confirm the dual role of this internal conflict.In the annual journal called Iyye (Yesterday), A.H.H. Maniku wrote in 1997 that this civil unrest was carried out deliberately by members of the Athireege dynasty to entice the British to intervene and that it was a plot of Ibrahim Didi, driving the reigning Sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen II to accept the British protectorate for personal gain, an action impairing Maldivian independence.Nasheed (2020: 86) confirms that 'it was the wish of Ibrahim Didi and Ex-Sultan, Ibrahim Nooraddeen II that the British intervene in the Maldivian internal politics'.
Thus, the British envoy came from Ceylon in 1887 with a 'letter' seeking the Sultan's endorsement.This document contained the terms of establishing British protectorate status in the Maldives.Considering the internal political turmoil, the Sultan was forced to sign this letter (Falaah, 2021: 201), while Panton (2015: xxx) notes that the British Empire 'forced' the Maldivian Sultan to accept the terms of becoming a British protectorate.Nasheed (2020: 3) suggests that this pressure embodies the hypocritical nature of the British Empire's foreign policy as 'Gun Boat Diplomacy', using force when necessary while presenting a façade of civility and cooperation.
Much later, a significant Maldivian-British interaction took place just before the first constitution of the Maldives was promulgated in 1932.Falaah (2021: 205) confirms the rivalry between the elite dynasties as one of the main reasons for the 1932 constitution.The ruling class persuaded the Sultan to seek advice from the British Government in Ceylon to endorse a constitution to promote power sharing among the rivals (Falaah, 2021: 206).The Maldivian ambassador to British Ceylon was among those who encouraged the British to get involved and to curtail the powers of Prime Minister Abdul Majeed Rannabandeyri Kilegefaanu, the grandson of Ibrahim Didi.It was the ambassador who encouraged the British to get involved in the constitutional chaos, which was followed by the arrival of a British Representative to the Maldives with a draft constitution in 1931 (Maniku, 1999: 9).
The earlier protectorate of 1887, based on a 'letter' signed by Sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen II, was thereafter fortified into a protectorate based on a formal 'treaty' in 1948.The 1887 letter had recognised British suzerainty over the Maldives and promised British non-intervention in Maldivian internal affairs.While acknowledging British responsibility for protecting the Maldives against foreign powers, it indicated the plan to conduct Maldivian foreign relations through the British governor in Ceylon.Following Sri Lanka's independence in 1948, that arrangement needed to be revisited.Falaah (2021: 202-3) observes that the resulting revised relationship between the Maldivian state and the British was a 'suzerain-vassal state' arrangement rather than a colonial relationship.Article 2 of the 1948 treaty confirmed the British commitment to protect the Maldives in the event of hostile attacks.Article 4 held the British responsible for conducting foreign relations on behalf of the Maldives.Article 5 stated that, after consultation with the Sultan, the British had the right to establish military facilities in any of the Maldivian islands.Falaah (2021: 202) therefore contends that this British protectorate was not solely motivated by the conflict between the powerful families and their merchant allies, but also by British aspirations to exercise tighter control of the Maldives and have a military presence.Maloney (1976: 656) writes that 'the British in 1887 signed an agreement with the Sultan affording "protection" and monopolising the Maldives' foreign affairs', but 'took no hand in internal administration', so that there is no colonial imprint, as found elsewhere in South Asia.
By the 1950s, however, the British began to interfere more directly in Maldivian domestic politics through offering economic aid.Internal politics then sparked efforts, in 1953, to establish a short-lived republic and to abolish the sultanate in 1954, though it was soon restored and then lasted until 1968, 3 years beyond Maldivian independence in 1965.Among much political strife in the 1950s, the British secured a lease of land for 100 years in the Maldivian southernmost Addu Atoll.The Maldivian Prime Minister Ibrahim Faamudheyri Kilegefaanu signed this agreement in Ceylon in 1956, without consulting his cabinet, though approval was later given.Soon, however, after becoming Prime Minister in 1957, Ibrahim Nasir, who was earlier a cabinet member during the office of Prime Minister Ibrahim Faamudheyri Kilegefaanu, pushed for complete independence from Britain, while the British construction of a military base under the 1956 lease continued (Phadnis & Luithui, 1981: 171).The United Suvadive Republic, proclaimed on 13 March 1959 by the southernmost atolls, at the time of the British plot to secure the military base, unsuccessfully attempted secession from the Maldives (Maloney, 1976: 665).
Such volatile internal politics reflect a tortuous journey of transition from a sultanate to a republic, albeit perceived to exist only in name (Maloney, 1976: 656;Misra, 2004b: 135), as old authoritarian habits continue and whoever managed to become president had a very strong position.All along, the same old families in several categories of nobility benefitted from the turmoil (Maloney, 1976: 662, 670), and internal rivalries continued to fester.Maloney (1976: 659) observed among Maldivians that animosity tended to manifest as factionalism and found 'an undercurrent of gossip on in whispered tones' (Maloney, 1976: 667), as open dissent and revolt might trigger physical violence or the customary punishment of banishment to a remote atoll (Colton, 1995: 218;Maloney, 1976: 660).
Through the ages until its independence in 1965, the status of the Maldives thus oscillated between suffering colonisation and maintaining sovereignty.The largely symbolic tributes sent to European powers had strengthened amicable relations, at first without compromising Maldivian statehood and independence.The Maldivian Sultans skilfully acknowledged Britain's status as the dominating power in the region, avoiding full-blown British colonisation of the Maldives while making the British feel comfortable.But the hands of the Sultans were tied by realising that any actions of a small state in the Indian Ocean that challenged British interests would result in reactions curtailing the Sultan's power.A ruler who was determined to maintain the independence of his small state had few options of safe co-existence with the powerful British.The Sultan was constantly dragged towards compromising the sovereignty of the state, given the strong British interests in control of the Maldives.However, the efforts of the Sultan's rivals in gaining sway in internal politics and winning British favours would also have compromised Maldivian sovereignty.
The historically almost inevitable outcome was, therefore, this small nation's independence.The agreement to grant complete independence was signed in Colombo on 26 July 1965, when the Maldives became a sultanate outside the Commonwealth, which it joined in 1982.It also became a member state of the United Nations.However, as the next section shows, the historically grounded patterns of intersection between the interests of competing foreign powers and the complications of volatile internal politics have continued to be the hallmark of current Maldivian geopolitics, exemplifying the country's small island status as both an asset and a liability (Phandis & Luithui, 1981: 166).

Post-Protectorate Maldivian Balancing of Internal and External Challenges
At this point, space does not permit a detailed discussion of the complex post-1967 Maldivian political scenario and wide-ranging geopolitical and internal struggles.
A broad-brush account here underpins the main heuristic contributions of this article, identifying further interdisciplinary avenues for new research on the remarkable links between past and present in Maldivian foreign relations and geopolitics.
Under the constitution of 2008, the Maldivian republican landscape is based on political pluralism.But like in previous centuries, political pluralism and rivalry put Maldivian foreign policy into a delicate, conflictual/adversarial position.Whoever is in opposition will probably challenge the incumbent president's policies and actions, sparking constant geopolitical complications when, as before, domestic conflicts and wider geopolitics interact.While the internal stakeholder group continues to be diverse and highly politicised, this internal wrangling now encounters wider regional and global geopolitical rivalries, prominently between India and China and now increasingly between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia (Ghafoor, 2023;Saberin, 2018).While the Maldives need external support for further development, these large external powers also need the Maldives for various strategic benefits.The Maldivian state has skilfully balanced the geopolitical competition between India and China over influence in the Maldives and has managed to benefit from such competition (Balázs, 2016).The scenario is now made even more intriguing and complex by Middle Eastern involvement.
As Chowdhary (2022: 293) emphasised, the Indian Ocean is crowded with trading lanes.The need for Maldivian help in securing these maritime trade routes puts the country in a good position to benefit from the competition between India and China (Balázs, 2016;Chatterjee, 2024), while other recent reports now clearly identify the risks and possibilities of closer links with Middle Eastern countries (Ghafoor, 2023;Saberin, 2024).
The Maldives pose no challenge to these big external players, yet have acquired strategic importance also as an international voice.Its standing as a nation bolsters its role within the wider commercial and diplomatic relationships with the major Asian players (Balázs, 2016;Ghafoor, 2023;Saberin, 2018).Further research needs to scrutinise and weigh up the respective risks for the Maldives in this complex geopolitical game.Will the Maldives be swallowed up politically by one of these big external powers?Or will domination through economic, cultural or other links expand to such an extent that there is no real independence left?
A closer examination of post-Protectorate Maldivian leadership struggles provides useful pointers for analysis.In 1965, the Maldives began to develop robust ties with India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (Chatterjee, 2024).After the Sultanate was abolished through a referendum in 1968, there were still no political parties, and the new presidents for the next 10 years struggled to make a mark.However, in 1978, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom became the president and maintained the office until 2008.A Sultanlike figure, he reasoned that his country's limited democracy had helped create strong economic growth, an understanding shared by President Ayub Khan in Pakistan (Hewitt, 1992: 114-5;Misra, 2004b: 135).Maldivians who benefitted from this traditional patron-client relationship largely agreed, while open dissent was not tolerated.Gayyom's authoritarian rule ensured relative stability both internally and externally.He developed tourism facilities and signed an Indo-Maldivian Treaty of Friendship in 1981, accompanied by various development projects.However, a 'lukewarm' (Chatterjee, 2024) approach to India prevailed, despite Indian intervention when Gayoom faced a coup in 1988 (Misra, 2004b: 139).Latent fears about an Indian takeover and a lack of trust are evident, since these troops had to leave once stability was restored (Chatterjee, 2024).According to Misra (2004b: 139), India played the role of guarantor of security for small states of South Asia (Misra, 2004b: 139), but concerns also arose about neo-colonial ambitions.Gayoom, however, recognised China's emergence 'as a global power with significant strategic interests in the Indian Ocean' (Chatterjee, 2024) and involved China in development projects that were perceived as risky in terms of protecting Maldivian independence.
Post-Gayoom, the constitution in 2008 fostered political pluralism with several political parties.This generated new partisan politics regarding Maldivian foreign relations, amidst increased geopolitical tensions in the Indian Ocean region.Under Mohamed Nasheed as President from 2008 to 2012, Maldivian foreign policy leaned more towards India (Chatterjee, 2024), but global recession troubles made link-ups with China more promising.The interim presidency of Mohammed Waheed in 2012-13 and President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom's rule (2013-18) brought the Maldives again closer to China.Signing up, like Sri Lanka, for China's ambitious One Belt, One Road project (Saberin, 2018) increased dependency on China (Chatterjee, 2024).President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (2018-23) again maintained stronger relationships with India, while most recently, Mohammed Muizzu, President since 2023, again favours China, but also considers India an important partner.While both countries are jostling for influence in the Maldives, Chatterjee (2024) correctly reiterates how Maldivian geopolitical strategising uses both India and China for its own benefit, though he overlooks the role of the Middle East.Ghafoor (2023) mentions that since the various Asian economies are increasingly interdependent in terms of energy supplies, they depend on the stability of Indian Ocean trade routes.
Growing Middle Eastern influence now attracts more attention of recent analysts (Ghafoor, 2023;Saberin, 2018).In 2015, Maldivian law was changed to allow foreigners who invest more than $1 billion to buy land (Saberin, 2018), but this law was repealed in 2019 (Ghafoor, 2023).In 2017, a Saudi-funded tourism project was criticised by the opposition as 'creeping colonialism' (Saberin, 2018), while the Chinese warned against outsider meddling, indicating nervousness about their competitors.Intriguingly, Saberin (2018) picks up a hint from an Indian journalist that Saudi Arabia uses such involvement to stake its claim as a shareholder in the Indian Oceanic region, while she also mentions India's struggles to mend ties with the Maldives.Ghafoor (2023) also raises this regarding recent investment projects.Criticism of Arab support for 'the Maldives and its brotherly people' (Saberin, 2018) indicates how religious dimensions intersect in such geopolitical scenarios, which extend to using Maldivian diplomatic support in certain Middle Eastern crisis scenarios.Recently, President Muizzu spoke of strengthening connections with Arab-Islamic nations, indicating that such influence is likely to increase (Ghafoor, 2023).
Overall, there is a visible pattern of different Maldivian governments exhibiting distinct preferences for certain external alignments, which raises questions about the need for consistency in Maldivian foreign relations and geopolitics.This could be achieved within existing institutional frameworks, despite continuing internal rivalry and would reinforce the nation's credibility in the eyes of other states.However, while alignments with particular external parties could yield many benefits, such decisions, like in past centuries, also risk creating new dependencies on hegemonic counterparts.Avoidance of neo-colonial subjugation, spelling the end of the Maldivian nation, is probably the one policy that all internal factions agree on.Critique of 'creeping colonialism by the Saudi government' (Saberin, 2018) identifies this.The emerging literature indicates the strength of those fears, identifying various forms of mistrust by different Maldivian stakeholder groups.Political concerns intersect with economic ambitions and frustrations about ongoing corruption (Saberin, 2018) and include cultural dimensions, particularly religion.These observations relate seamlessly to worries that the anyway limited land of the islands will be sold to outsiders, now the Chinese and Arabs (Ghafoor, 2023;Saberin, 2018), leading to new forms of unwanted dependency.It seems that memories of leasing land to the British for military constructions in 1956 and the resulting internal strife in 1959 around the attempted secession of Suvadive remain traumatic components of the Maldivian psyche today, strengthening fears of recolonisation by whatever name.

Conclusions
This article shows how, over centuries, various competing internal and external stakeholders in Maldivian governance and geopolitics interacted, preventing full consistency of policy and practice, since different governments choose different preferences.As the article showed, foreign powers' interests in the Maldives as a geostrategic jewel were never the only factor to shape the trajectory of Maldivian foreign relations and geopolitics.The complex dynamics of internal discord within the Maldivian royal court earlier, and now the interactions of the respective president and opposition leaders, consistently exerted a significant influence on how the Maldives engaged with various foreign entities.
This study initially aimed to provide a template for future interdisciplinary studies on foreign policy in the Maldives, at first sight a niche topic.However, by expanding the ambit to discuss the geopolitical predicaments of small states, whose future 20 years ago appeared 'grim' to Misra (2004b: 146), this article also shows that, at least for the Maldives, the future looks bright.However, it remains imperative that well-considered approaches are taken to balance concerns of public and private interest of the Maldives.If, in colonial times, certain elite families were the main players apart from the Sultan, today similar internal divisions now manifest in the competition of various Maldivian party leaders.
Scholars, with their respective academic agenda and disciplinary interests, tend to pursue certain lines of argument while neglecting others.This article clearly brings out how earlier strategies of balancing of competing political powers during precolonial and colonial times, both externally and internally, dominated Maldivian politics, while today's globalisation scenario still puts this small island nation at the mercy of similar dynamics.The external players now manifest as a new class of twenty-first-century global power centres in India, China and the Middle East, tempted to exploit strategic weaknesses in the handling of Maldivian affairs.Demonstrating how internal and external stakeholders constantly interact dynamically, of necessity, there cannot be full consistency if different governments choose different preferences.However, despite internal differences, such a small state can still, through long-practised geopolitical diplomatic agility and multiple domestic balancing acts, safeguard its existence as an independent state.
Ibrahim Nahushal holds an MA in International Relations and Cultural Diplomacy from the Hochschule Furtwangen University at Furtwangen in Germany and is now an independent researcher based in Germany.His interests cover geopolitics, diplomacy, trade and political economy.[e-mail: nahushal@hotmail.com]