How three colonial powers gained – and then lost – control over the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb

0 September 24, 2026 06:45

The Portuguese, Dutch and British empires all vied for control over the vital shipping lane.

Over recent months, the straits of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb have become synonymous with geopolitical jostling. Whoever controls these narrow waterways governs the flow of maritime traffic from the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean – and with it, a vitally significant chunk of global trade.

However, conflict over these straits is almost as old as modern maritime trade itself. The war between the US and Iran over these chokepoints is just the latest chapter in a centuries-long history of extra-regional powers attempting to influence or dominate the Middle East by sea.

Ming China offers one of the earliest examples of an extra-regional power projecting its power through naval might and diplomacy. In 1405, the Chinese Muslim admiral, explorer and diplomat Zheng He embarked on the first of seven expeditions across the Indian Ocean. Commanding fleets of more than 300 vessels, he reached the town of Hormuz around 1414, then Aden in Yemen, passing through Bab el-Mandeb into the Red Sea.

This Pax Sinica did not control the straits. Instead, it established a strong trading presence based on displays of naval power, diplomatic missions, and lucrative gift exchanges. Unlike later colonial powers, Zheng He did not establish colonies at Hormuz or along the Arabian coast. Instead, he entered the existing trading system established by the region’s Arab, Persian, Indian, and East African merchants.

The voyages also demonstrate the limits of overextended maritime power. After Zheng He’s final expedition in the 1430s, shifting priorities in the Ming dynasty brought the voyages to an end. The state was unwilling to invest in its navy and its upkeep.

Today, China invokes Zheng He’s voyages to bestow historical legitimacy upon Chinese-Middle Eastern relations. Beijing presents its modern investments in infrastructure, energy, and ports, such as Gwadar in Pakistan, as the revival of an ancient and peaceful relationship that stretches back to the pre-modern Silk Road.

Back in the 1500s, however, the rise in global shipping traffic and the arrival of Europe’s colonial powers would soon mark a shift towards more violent, aggressive efforts to control the straits.

Portugal’s naval dominance

The Portuguese were naval innovators, introducing a more coercive form of maritime power employing heavy cannons on ocean-going ships. In 1513, Afonso de Albuquerque attacked Aden in an attempt to control access to the Red Sea. He failed to capture the fortified mainland city, which was surrounded by steep mountainous terrain.

As the US has learned centuries later, naval superiority did not translate into immediate victory on land. Portuguese warships could destroy vessels and bombard a harbour, but commanding the waters outside a port was not the same as controlling the land behind it.

However, in 1515, Albuquerque managed to seize the town of Hormuz, where he imposed the cartaz, a paid permit for merchants to sail through the gulf and Indian Ocean. This regulation of trade is, in essence, what Iran’s toll is attempting to do in the present.

The ruins of a 16th century Portuguese fort can still be seen on Hormuz Island, in Iran.
ImanFakhri/wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA

This “Pax Lusitana” was more violent than its Chinese predecessor, and in 1622, forces from the Iranian Safavid dynasty and English East India Company vessels joined forces to expel the Portuguese from Hormuz and open up trade.

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British and Dutch takeover

With Portugal ousted, Ottoman, Safavid, Omani, Dutch and English forces vied for control. The system was dominated by powerful European ships, and by local rulers who controlled both the ports and the goods that flowed through them.

The Dutch East India Company entered these waters in 1614. Supported by heavily armed ships, it established itself at the port of Mokha, in Yemen.

Following Portugal’s expulsion, the Dutch obtained commercial privileges in 1623 and competed with British traders in Bandar Abbas, the principal Gulf trading station across from Hormuz.

A Dutch map of the fortified city of Hormuz, dating from 1617.
Willem Blaeu/wikimedia commons

While the British were famous for the tea trade, the Dutch came to dominate coffee. Previously the domain of traders based in Mokha, the Dutch broke Yemen’s monopoly over the coffee trade by smuggling Arabica coffee plants to the Indonesian island of Java, where they were cultivated on a massive scale.

The Dutch thus demonstrated that the balance of maritime power could shift through control of production and trade, rather than through cannons and coercion.

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However, once the British captured Aden in 1839 they gained the upper hand. They signed agreements with neighbouring rulers and tribes in South Yemen that gave them de facto control over Bal al-Mandab at the dawn of the industrial era.

Aden soon became a naval coaling station and communications centre, connected to India by telegraph cables. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the British also dominated this chokepoint, as the Red Sea offered the shortest maritime route to its crown colony in India.

British hegemony soon came to rely on steam-powered warships and ports, as well as loans and treaties. Much of this was sustained by local proxies along the coast, stretching from Aden to Kuwait.

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From the strait of Hormuz to Malacca, global trade relies almost entirely on these five narrow waterways

Lessons for the US today

After the second world war, the balance of power shifted once again. The US replaced the UK with bases, carrier groups, and arms sales in exchange for Gulf oil. In 1980, US President Jimmy Carter declared that any Soviet attempt to control the Gulf would be treated as an attack on American interests and resisted by military force.

Track forward 45 years, and Trump has effectively (though perhaps inadvertently) dismantled the Carter Doctrine. While US naval vessels are now in the strait of Hormuz to protect freedom of navigation, it was Trump’s February 2026 war that endangered shipping in the first place, as it prompted Iran to disrupt Gulf trade in retaliation.

The historical lesson is that, while extra-regional maritime hegemony is possible, it is temporary and ephemeral, as fleeting like the waves that carry it. China abandoned its fleets, Portugal lost Hormuz, the Dutch focused on Java, and Britain left Aden. Dominance shifted when hegemonic powers became overextended, technologies changed, and local alliances realigned.

Iran and the Houthis, who have recently seized Mokha, do not require carrier fleets. Instead, their missiles, mines and drones weaponise the cost of maritime insurance. For all its naval might, the US cannot eliminate the local agency of societies surrounding Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Every empire before it has discovered that controlling a chokepoint does not translate into control of the political world and will that surrounds it.

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Ibrahim Al-Marashi no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

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