Page 240 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Conclusion

Challenging the received wisdom on the Gulf

Over the two centuries between the Al Khalifah occupation and independ-
ence 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. The histories narrated in this book question earlier
accounts centring on tribal elites and ruling families as ‘state makers’,
shifting the emphasis to notables, merchants, pearl divers, immigrants,
peasants, oil workers and national activists. Bahrain’s tribal administra-
tion did not occupy a hegemonic position in the town of the pearl boom.
Although strong tribal and sectarian solidarities supported the rule of the
Al Khalifah family, tribal authority was clearly enmeshed in economic
interests spatially anchored in the port and in the markets, and in political
manoeuvres for the control of revenue and real estate. The evolution of
the urban body politic in the modern era presents a contrasting picture.
On the one hand, tribes no longer featured as political units unlike the old
networks of patronage, quarter solidarities, and professional and religious

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