Page 102 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

82 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

This project, which sealed a new partnership between the merchants and
Shaykh ‘Isa, laid the foundation for the development of modern port
facilities in the following decades. The increasing visibility of Bahrain on
the map of the Government of India was only temporarily obfuscated by
the outbreak of the war. The end of the hostilities marked a new phase of
British imperial expansion which consolidated the political and commer-
cial role of Manama as the lynchpin of British imperial influence in the
Persian Gulf.

The markets
The organisation of trade in the inner city reflected the function of the
harbour as a gateway to faraway regions which gathered supplies for the
urban population beyond the town’s immediate agricultural hinterland.
Only a very few items apart from agricultural produce reached the shops of
Manama from the villages: palm mats and baskets, sails and some types of
earthenware, particularly from the village of al-‘Ali which had a long
tradition of pottery making. 21 Regardless of status, occupation and
wealth, the average urban dweller relied heavily on overseas imports, as
suggested by a list compiled by the British agency in 1903: rice, wheat,
meat, coffee, tea, sugar, soap, candles, matches, pottery, glassware, char-
coal, firewood, spices, cotton, wool and silk. If compared with the first
available trade statistics on Bahrain collected by Captain Brucks of the
Royal Navy in 1826, the 1903 list suggests that new patterns of consump-
tion had emerged as a result of increased wealth among the upper
classes. 22 Yet the majority of commodities still came from overseas. In
the late nineteenth century, for instance, some villages started to produce
garments as a result of the availability of cotton cloth from India, but most
clothing continued to be imported in accordance with the requirements
and dressing styles of the town’s communities. Foodstuffs continued to be
the largest item of imports, particularly rice, which was the most impor-
tant item in the local diet. Moreover, the large numbers of shops reported
by the Persian traveller Muhammad Ibrahim Kazeruni in 1836 and by
Lorimer in 1904 (400 and 450, respectively) cannot be explained by the
demands of the urban population alone but also by the requirements of
1 December 1916 in Shaykh ‘Isa to Political Agent, 7 Safar 1335/3 December 1916. R/15/
2/958 IOR: Shaykh ‘Isa to Political Agent, 12 Ramadan 1334/13 July 1916 and 18 Rajab
1335/ 10 May 1917; petition, 13 Rajab 1335/5 May 1917.
21
For village production in Bahrain see Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 245. Tajir, ‘Aqd al-lal,
pp. 28–42; Brucks, ‘Memoir Descriptive of the Navigation of the Gulf’ (1829–35), fiche
1096, pp. 568–9, V 23/217 IOR.
22
‘Schedule of the Proposed Wharfage Dues to Be Levied on All Goods’ in Assistant
Political Agent Bahrain to Political Resident Bushehr, 3 May 1903, n. 74, R/15/2/49 IOR.