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190 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

key elements in the evolution of modern political identity. The nationalist
discourse condemned communal and sectarian cleavages as a curse
brought upon the nation by the forces of backwardness. As an ideology of
popular militancy, Arabism opened up new communitarian spaces which
united Sunnis and Shi‘is. As the basis for political mobilisation, however, it
did favour the resurgence of ethnic and sectarian particularism as suggested
by the political inclinations of the Persians and of large segments of the
ma’tam population in the era of al-Ha’yah.
As the outbreaks of unrest continued to mark crucial historical junc-
tures, Bahrain’s leading port retained the character of a ‘border’ town and
of an unstable frontier society. In this respect, it is significant that ‘foreign-
ers’ provided a constant focus of contestation and civic strife in times of
conflict even after the discovery of oil. In fact, the changing meaning of
this term in public discourse reveals the influence of nation building and
state centralisation in reshaping the definition of ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’
to the town. In the early twentieth century, the aliens were Bedouin
tribesmen, the Al Khalifah family and their entourage and the British-
protected migrant communities, often viewed as instruments of imperial
‘intrusion’. By the early 1950s, ‘foreigner’ had become synonymous with
non-Arab and non-national, and the symbol of the new face assumed by
British imperialism in the oil era as the agent of the economic exploitation
of the national population.