Abstract
For nearly 250 years from the time of its settlement in the early eighteenth century until the advent of oil urbanization in the 1950s, Kuwait was a thriving maritime town whose main economic activities were determined by the primacy of its port. A handful of key studies have examined the development of pre-oil Kuwait from this perspective. From them, we have a growing understanding of the role the town’s port played in determining Kuwait’s economic and political development in a regional and global context (specifically, in relation to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean trading networks, the Gulf pearling industry, international diplomacy, and the international market economy).1
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Notes
See, for example, Hala Fattah, The Politics of Regional Trade in Iraq, Arabia, and the Gulf: 1745–1900 (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997)
Jacqueline Ismael, Kuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993)
and Frederick F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
Frank Broeze, “Kuwait Before Oil: The Dynamics and Morphology of an Arab Port City,” in Gateways of Asia: Port Cities of Asia in the 13th–20th Centuries, ed. Frank Broeze (London: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 180.
Yaqub Yousef al-Ghunaim, Sheikh Ahmed Aljabir wa Mas’alat al-Hudud al-Kuwaytiyya (Kuwait, 1999), 10
and Ulrich W. Haarmann, “Two 18th-century Sources on Kuwait: Murtada b. Ali b. Alwan and Carsten Niebuhr,” in Kuwait: The Growth of a Historic Identity, ed. Ben J. Slot (London: Arabian Publishing, 2003), 37–38.
Lewis Pelly, “Remarks on the Tribes, Trade and Resources around the Shore Line of the Persian Gulf,” in Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, vol. XVII (January 1863–December 1864) (Bombay: Education Society’s Press), 72–73.
Carsten Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, vol. II, trans. Robert Heron (Edinburgh: R. Morison and Son, 1792; reprint Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 1994), 127.
J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, vol. 2 (Calcutta, 1908; reprint Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, England: Archive Editions, 1986), 1053–58.
Suhail Shuhaiber, “Social and Political Developments in Kuwait Prior to 1961,” in Kuwait: The Growth of a Historic Identity, ed. Ben J. Slot (London: Arabian Publishing, 2003), 98.
Abdulaziz al-Rushaid, Tarikh al-Kuwait (Kuwait: Qurtas Publishing, 1999), 109
Yousef bin ‘Issa al-Qina‘i, Safhat min Tarikh al-Kuwait (Cairo: Dar Sa‘ad Misr, 1946), 8.
Alan Rush, Al-Sabah: History and Genealogy of Kuwaits Ruling Family (London: Ithaca Press, 1987), 2.
For more detail on these issues see: Ahmad Abu-Hakima, The Modern History of Kuwait, 1750–1965 (London: Luzac & Co., 1983); and Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf.
Lewis Pelly, Report on a Journey to Riyadh in Central Arabia (Cambridge: Oleander, 1865), 10.
For a thorough analysis of the political dynamics between the rulers and merchants before and after oil see Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Alan Villiers, Sons of Sindbad (London: Arabian Publishing, 2006), 353 [note that this is a republication of the same work (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1940), published also as Sons of Sinbad (New York: Scribner’s, 1940, rev. ed. 1969). The British and US editions are paginated differently.]; Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, 1006.
Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 65.
Violet Dickson, Forty Years in Kuwait (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 106.
Mohammed Jamal, Al-Hiraf wa-l-Mihan wa-l-Anshita al-Tijariyya al-Qadima fi-l-Kuwait (Kuwait: CRSK, 2003), 153.
Saif al-Shamlan, Pearling in the Arabian Gulf: A Kuwaiti Memoir (London: The London Centre of Arab Studies, 2001), 95.
Ahmed al-Khatib, al-Kuwait: Min al-Imara ila al-Dawla, Dhikrayat al-Amal al-Watany wa al-Qawmy (Beirut: Al-Markaz al-Thaqafy al-Araby, 2007), 27.
Rhoads Murphey, “On the Evolution of the Port City,” in Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th to 20th Centuries, ed. Frank Broeze (Australia: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 225.
H. H. Dowding, Koweit: A Report (Simla: Government of India, 1903), 19.
Khaled Adham, “Rediscovering the Island: Doha’s Urbanity from Pearls to Spectacle,” in The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development, ed. Yasser Elsheshtawy (London: Routledge, 2008), 224.
Nelida Fuccaro, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 52.
Mohammed al-Shaybani and Barrak al-Mutairi, Al-Qadha’wa al-Qadha fi-l-Kuwait Munthu al-Nash’a hatta al-Dawla (Kuwait: Markaz al-Makhtutat wa al-Turath wa al-Watha’iq, 1999), 13.
Barclay Raunkiaer, Through Wahhabiland on Camelback (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 39.
Mohammad Jamal, Aswaq al-Kuwait al-Qadimah (Kuwait: Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait, 2004), 28.
Zahra Freeth, Kuwait Was My Home (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956), 50.
Samuel Zwemer, “Koweit Occupied,” Neglected Arabia 49 (1904): 7.
Pelly, “Remarks on the Tribes,” 73–74; Samuel M. Zwemer, Arabia: The Cradle of Islam (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1900), 128.
J. R. Povah, Gazetteer of Arabia (Calcutta: Government of India, 1887), 44.
Ronald Lewcock and Zahra Freeth, Traditional Architecture in Kuwait and the Northern Gulf (London: Archaeology Research Papers, 1978), 7.
Fran Tonkiss, Space, the City and Social Theory: Social Relations and Urban Forms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 67.
Garrett De Jong, “The Ubiquitous Gasoline Tin,” Neglected Arabia 153 (1930): 10.
Arthur K. Bennett, “A New Beginning at Kuweit,” Neglected Arabia 73 (1910): 14.
Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches (London: John Murray, 1947), 192
Zahra Freeth, A New Look at Kuwait (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), 107.
Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift, Cities: Reimagining the Urban (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 139.
Lewis Scudder, “May Your Feat Be Blessed,” Neglected Arabia 194 (1941): 15.
Kuwait Municipality, Planning and Urban Development, 1980, 14–15.
Saif Abbas Abdulla Dehrab, “Childhood in the Sand,” in Remembering Childhood in the Middle East: Memoirs from a Century of Change, ed. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002), 178.
C. Stanley, G. Mylrea, “Annual Report of Men’s Medical Department, Kuweit,” Neglected Arabia, 96 (1916): 13.
Nelida Fuccaro, “Pearl Towns and Early Oil Cities: Migration and Integration in the Arab Coast of the Persian Gulf,” in Migration and the Making of Urban Modernity in the Ottoman Empire and Beyond, ed. Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi, and Florian Riedler (London: Routledge, 2010), 106–8.
William Beeman, “Gulf Society: An Anthropological View of the Khalijis—Their Evolution and Way of Life,” in The Persian Gulf in History, ed. Lawrence G. Potter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 148–49.
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© 2014 Lawrence G. Potter
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Al-Nakib, F. (2014). Inside a Gulf Port: The Dynamics of Urban Life in Pre-Oil Kuwait. In: Potter, L.G. (eds) The Persian Gulf in Modern Times. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485779_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485779_9
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