Page 92 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

72 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

social and political cohesion. For instance, the increasing reliance of the
pearling industry on immigrant labour of non-tribal extraction created a
rudimentary class system which started to antagonise merchants and
capitalists on the one hand, and divers on the other. Similarly, the enforce-
ment of British extraterritorial jurisdiction over British Indian subjects
and foreign merchants after the issue of the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts of
1890 and 1913 (followed by the enforcement of Orders-in-Councils)
created new political divisions among the urban population and empow-
80
ered British agents at the expense of ruling families.
Transformations which affected merchants are the most illuminating
examples of how in the first two decades of the twentieth century Gulf
towns became the focus of new political identities and class solidarities. As
the benefits of residence increased, urban environments started to provide
Gulf merchants with a source of wealth in the form of property ownership.
It was the consolidation of a new class of urban landowners among the
merchant classes of Manama and Kuwait which inaugurated a new type of
urban politics. Merchants were no longer prone to express political dis-
sent by relocating their business elsewhere. In Kuwait they performed
their very last ‘act of secession’, as Jill Crystal puts it, in 1909 when they
fled to Bahrain as a result of the strict fiscal policies of Mubarak al-Sabah.
By 1911 they had returned to the town and started to organise themselves
politically, affirming their sense of belonging to Kuwait. 81 As will be
illustrated in the following chapter, the landed aristocracy of Manama
also coalesced into a fairly united political force. Operating in symbiosis
with the ruling family and with British political agents, they took control of
the urban administration and effectively guided the development of the
town on the eve of the discovery of oil.

80
H. M. Al Baharna, British Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction in the Gulf, 1913–1971 (Slough:
Archive Editions, 1998), pp. 10–12, 19–20. For a general discussion of the issue of extra-
territoriality and port cities before the twentieth century see R. Murphey, ‘On the
Evolution of the Port City’ pp. 236–7.
81
Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf, pp. 24–5 (p. 25); Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 1058.