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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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