Challenging the received wisdom on the Gulf

Over the two centuries between the Al Khalifah occupation and independence from British control, urban development and urban life in Bahrain continued to mirror the broader social and political transformations of the coastal regions of the Persian Gulf. Before oil the dynamics of these frontier societies were expressed in the visual and cultural language of expanding port towns in a way which resembles – albeit in a different economy of scale – the growth of Gulf cities in the age of oil and globalisation. In approaching the city as a separate theme in Gulf history, this study has revisited the political and social evolution of Manama and Bahrain in the age of tribal expansion, British rule and oil. The analysis of Manama's urban history as the world centre of pearling, the hub of British imperial influence and the capital of the modern state of Bahrain challenges standard portrayals of the politics, society and urbanism of the Gulf littoral.

Manama and its agricultural hinterland constitute an excellent vantage point for observing the multiple facets and composite nature of state and nation building in the Gulf before and after oil. The interface between tribe and state in Bahrain, and more generally along the Gulf coast, has thus to be understood in the context of the complex society of its historic port settlement.