Anglo-Kuwaiti Agreement of 1899 Following their successful 1871 Najd expedition, the Ottomans solidified their influence over Kuwait. In 1892, Muhammad Al-Sabah ascended to the Kuwaiti throne. Mohammad's ineptitude as a ruler led to a gradual emergence of his brother in law Yusuf bin Abdullah Al–Ibrahim as an éminence grise. Al–Ibrahim went on to pursue Turkophile policies, which alienated the nationalist circles of Kuwait's society. In May 1896, Mohammad was assassinated by his half brother Mubarak Al-Sabah who then seized power. The Ottomans believed that the revolt was a part of a larger British plot to create a Pan-Arab anti-Ottoman alliance. The Ottomans cited Mubarak's
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