Mubarak Al-Sabah Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty with Great Britain on November 23, 1899, pledging himself and his successors not to receive foreign agents or representatives or to cede or sell territory without the approval of the British government, with this agreement, and the guarantee it represented in Kuwait and the Al-Sabah family, he is regarded as the founder of modern-day Kuwait. German explorer, Hermann Burchardt, photographed Sheikh Mubarak in 1903, in what is now an iconic photograph. Mubarak was born into Kuwaiti's powerful al-Sabah family in 1837 son of Sheikh Sabah II Al-Sabah (r. 1859-1866). Once he was older Mubarak served primarily as the
Transformation of the Ottoman Empire in particular suffered from heavy competition, and its commercial presence declined significantly, particularly after 1645, when the Ottomans and Venetians went to war over Crete. The English were by far the most successful European merchants in the empire during the seventeenth century, and they benefited from friendly relations between the two states. The Ottomans exported raw silk and imported cheap woolen cloth, as well as tin necessary for the production of military armaments. While in 1550 the Ottoman Empire was a patrimonial state in which all power was held exclusively by the sultan, by 1700 it had experienced a political