Mubarak Al-Sabah office nor the flag would happen until World War I. Mubarak as well, in October 1907 sold the rights for any terminus railroad sites to the British, compromising the German-Ottoman plan to extend the Berlin-Baghdad Railway to the port, which would have given them access to trade on the Indian subcontinent. In exchange Mubarak received £4000 per year and a promise that Britain would recognize Kuwait's autonomy and the Sheikh's power over it. Mubarak also engaged in affairs concerning the neighboring areas around him, which caused consternation on both the Ottoman and the British sides. Mubarak supported and smuggled British
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