Page 217 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

City and countryside in modern Bahrain 197

15 Traffic warden in central Manama with the typical Indian-style
police uniform, early 1940s

Attentive to any innovation which might benefit their business, merchants
competed to sponsor modern roads soon after the end of World War I,
and continued to press for their extension and maintenance after the
establishment of the municipality. Automobiles became a much sought-
after status symbol for members of the ruling family and for entrepre-
neurs. By the 1950s the marketing of cars had reached large audiences, as
suggested by the ubiquity of car advertising in the local press. In 1926 only
ten cars circulated in Bahrain; by 1957 there were 5,595 registered
vehicles including cars, taxis and trucks. Between 1960 and 1967 the
number of private cars increased by 82 per cent, causing regular rush-
hour traffic jams in Manama (see Figure 15). 10
Thoroughfares were the window onto Manama for the outside world, a
vantage point from which the growing number of overseas travellers who
reached the city by air and sea en route to India and Europe could observe
Bahrain’s path towards modernity. The municipality attempted, not
always successfully, to enforce a uniform appearance to the frontage of
thoroughfares which were visible to car passengers. In 1947 Belgrave

10
Bu Hajji, Lamahat min tarikh al-murur, pp. 31, 296; ‘The Bahrain Economy’, memoran-
dum by the Ministry of Overseas Development, 15 October 1968, CAB 148/90 PRO;
‘Bahrain Annual Review for 1971’, Diplomatic report n. 65/72, 31 December 1971, FCO
8/1823 PRO.