Major-General Sir Percy Zachariah Cox (20 November 1864 – 20 February 1937) was a British Indian Army officer and Colonial Office administrator in the Middle East. He was one of the major figures in the creation of the current Middle East. Family and early life Cox was born in Harwood Hall, Herongate, Essex, one of seven children born to Julienne Emily ( Saunders) Cox and cricketer Arthur Zachariah Cox ( Button). He was educated initially at Harrow School where he developed interests in natural history, geography, and travel. In February 1884, being his father's third son and therefore without significant inheritance, Cox joined the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a Lieutenant into the Cameronians, joining their 2nd Battalion in India. In November 1889, an outstanding planner, he transferred to the Bengal Staff Corps. On 14 November 1889 he married Louisa Belle, youngest daughter of Irish-born surgeon-general John Butler Hamilton. British Somaliland and Muscat (1893–1903) After holding minor administrative appointments in Kolhapur and Savantvadi in India, Cox was posted to British Somaliland, which was then administered from India, as Assistant Political Resident at Zeila. He transferred to Berbera in 1894. He was promoted to captain in February 1895. In May 1895 he was given command of an expedition against the Rer Hared clan, which had blocked trade routes and was raiding the coast. With only 52 Indian and Somali regulars and 1,500 poor quality, untrained local irregulars, he defeated the Rer Hared in six weeks. Later that year 1895, he was promoted to be assistant to the Viceroy of India's agent in Baroda. For 1899 he had intended to join the US expedition under A Donaldson Smith between the River Nile and Lake Rudolf, but in October 1899, the new Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon appointed Cox Political Agent and consul at Muscat, Oman, inheriting a tense situation between the British, French and Arabs who regarded the area as under their influence. The French had leased a coaling station from Sultan Feisal, the local ruler, for the French Navy. The French also gave protection to the local slave trade, which the British opposed. Feisal was ordered by the British under Cox to board the British merchantman SS Eclipse, whose guns were trained on his palace and reprimanded and informed that his annual subsidy could be withdrawn by the British government. Cox managed to successfully end French influence in