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14 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

cosmopolitan settlements, these ports are characterised as ‘city-societies’–

rather than city-states – on the basis of a number of key features of their

body politic.

Chapter 3 refocusses on Bahrain and deals with Manama during the

pearl boom and before the establishment of municipal government in

1919. The distinctive character of Manama’s urban system is explained

through an analysis of its dual connection with rural Bahrain and with the

maritime economy of the Persian Gulf. The making of the town as a major

trade emporium and as the world centre of pearling is explained through a

number of symbiotic relationships. On the one hand, the evolution of the

harbour, markets and residential areas is linked to the presence of immi-

grants, the accumulation of merchant capital, and the consolidation of a

class of foreign merchants who acted as the brokers between the popula-

tion, the Al Khalifah family and Bahrain’s overseas economy. On the

other, the organisation of urban space is considered from the perspective

of changing patterns of land control, a key factor in defining the political

profile of merchants as urban elites.

Chapter 4 discusses the development of Manama between 1919 and

1957 through the lens of its municipality, the first modern institution of

government established along the Arab coa st. While urban reform is

treated as an integral part of the process of state building initiated by the
Government of India in Bahrain in the 1920s, this chapter is particularly
concerned with the influence of the new municipal order on urban politics
and society. The socially conservative outlook of the municipal council

(majlis al-baladiyyah) and changes which affected the markets are analysed

in order to illustrate the ambiguous role played by the municipality in
processes of political and social modernisation leading to the explosion of
sectarian and labour conflict in the early 1950s.
Under the rubric of urban ‘disorder’, Chapter 5 investigates how epi-
sodes of violence, Muharram rituals and mass events defined domains of
political mobilisation for residents and urban elites, and spaces of contest-
ation against the government. The aim is to show how unrest marked
crucial junctures in the process of state and nation building before and
after oil, while signposting changes in the political organisation of urban
society. Episodes of unrest are also examined as symbols of political
communication in order to trace the cumulative experience of popular
politics leading to the nationalist agitations of the 1950s.
Chapter 6 explores and contrasts the impact of state intervention on
Manama and on its agricultural hinterland in the oil era. Drawing on the
discussion of pre-oil urbanisation and state formation in Chapters 1 and 3,
it identifies a new phase in Bahrain’s ‘dialectic of urbanisation’ brought
about by oil revenue and political centralisation, both of which pitted the