Page 93 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

3 Ordering space, politics and community
in Manama, 1880s–1919

Between the accession to power of Shaykh ‘Isa ibn ‘Ali Al Khalifah in 1869
and the establishment of municipal government in 1919, the growth of
Manama reflected the evolution of Bahrain’s pearling and entrepôt
economies and the increasing importance of the Government of India in
fostering its semi-autonomous position within the Al Khalifah domains.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the urban layout revealed the relative
weakness of the tribal administration and the critical role played by
trade and immigration in the expansion of the previous decades. Unlike
Muharraq, which developed around the residences of the Al Khalifah
family, Manama did not have a clearly defined administrative and political
centre. Its configuration was to a great extent the result of the spatial and
demographic requirements of the maritime economy which dominated
urban life. The successive waves of rural and overseas immigrants and
the increasing volume of trade were matched by the development of the
harbour and the markets, fostering the growth of residential districts along
the seafront. 1
While the town developed gradually throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury, its political and social orders crystallised in the years of the pearl
boom, particularly after the 1880s. In this period the accelerated develop-
ment of the harbour, markets, neighbourhoods and religious institutions
unveils the ‘dynamics of power’ which characterised the rise of a powerful
merchant class and the contest, as well as the symbiotic relationship,
between merchants and rulers on the one hand and the Al Khalifah and
British agents on the other. Moreover, in the absence of a strong govern-
ment, immigrants, entrepreneurs and labourers had the upper hand in the
creation of new urban space and in the making of the town’s socio-
political orders. In this respect, three elements were crucial to the evolu-
tion of Manama as a ‘city-society’ in the sense suggested in the previous
chapter: the accumulation of merchant capital, communal solidarities and

1
I am indebted to Ahmad al-Jowder for suggestions on the socio-economic and political
implications of the different spatial organisation of Manama and Muharraq.
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