Mubarak Al-Sabah of Mubarak's supposed assassination plot spread throughout the Ottoman Empire and abroad, which proved a serious obstacle in establishing his legitimacy as a ruler. Mubarak acted quickly to bribe the Ottoman bureaucracy through lavish gift giving in order to gain support for his appointment as kaymakam [sub governor] of Kuwait like his previous brothers. This is further illustrated through a memorandum by Captain J.F. Whyte, a British agent stationed in Basra: “Sheikh Mubarak has, since his usurpation, been employing his late brother’s wealth to secure his recognition as Sheikh and his appointment as Kaimakam of Koweit by the Sublime Porte.”
Historiography of the fall of the Ottoman Empire the first writers in the 1960s to summarise the works on Ottoman socio-economic history. He suggested one of the reasons for Ottoman economic decline was the inability of the ruling class to make a clear choice between war and the more conventional types of capital formation. Berkes' work however focused on the confrontation of the Ottomans and the Europeans, and though important, had little detail on the commercial activities of the state. The Ottomans saw military expansion and fiscalism as the primary source of wealth, with agriculture seen as more important than manufacture and commerce. Berkes described the Ottoman economy