The opening of the Suez Canal had a significant impact on the maritime commerce of South and South-east Asia. It also strengthened the European imperial presence in these regions, by speeding up civil and military transport and communications. However, the effects of the Canal were potentially even greater on the northern and western fringes of the Indian Ocean. A great swathe of coastal waters – from Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf, around the shores of the Arabian peninsula to the Red Sea, and from the Red Sea southwards round Cape Gardafui and along the Somali coast to the equatorial regions of eastern Africa – was suddenly connected directly to the shipping world of the Mediterranean and beyond. Territories which formerly lay at the end of long shipping routes from Europe around southern Africa to the Indian Ocean ports, and whose isolation from European trade and politics had been eroded only to a limited degree by overland commerce and communications, were now in shipping terms closer to Europe by several weeks and by thousands of miles. Here was a zone of ancient Arab mercantile and maritime enterprise which now had thrust through it, from Alexandria to Aden and onwards, a transport and communications route employing the latest and most efficient maritime technology. A change of such magnitude could not help but have repercussions on the commerce and shipping of the Middle East and eastern Africa. It also significantly enhanced the geo-strategic importance of the territories bordering the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. European statesmen had to consider the naval and military implications of the new route for their imperial possessions in Asia and the Pacific – as well as for the southern flanks of the Turkish and Persian empires that stood between that route and these possessions on the one hand and the advance of Russian power in Central Asia on the other. Among those poised to respond to the opportunities and challenges presented by the Canal on the northern and western flanks of the Indian Ocean, in waters and seaboard territories where the British and British Indian governments exercised varying degrees of naval and political influence, were the men of the Mackinnon group.