Author : Salwa Al-Ghanem
Publisher : I.B. Tauris
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 32,39 MB
Release : 1998-12-31
Category : History
ISBN : 9781860643507
This is a critical history of the reign of Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, widely regarded as the founder of modern Kuwait. The author discusses the Sheikh's seizure of power and the nature of his involvement in tribal politics.
Author : B. Slot
Publisher : Arabian Publishing Limited
Page : 520 pages
File Size : 40,49 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN :
Mubarak Al-Sabah took control of his tiny state in 1896, just as the Ottoman Empire seemed on the point of swallowing it up. He then played for time by manipulating the indecision and venality of the Ottoman system. At the same time he managed to kindle a hesitant British interest in Kuwait, doing so by deftly exploiting a rivalry among European powers that was fuelled by speculation over Kuwait's strategic importance as the possible terminus of a railway - conceived as the vital link in rapid communication between Europe and India.
Author : Rivka Azoulay
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 23,63 MB
Release : 2020-07-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1838605061
The Emirate of Kuwait hardly resembles the city-State it was at the start of the 20th century. The discovery of oil in 1938 rapidly transformed the tiny tribal sheikhdom of the Al-Sabah into a modern oil-producing state where, by the early 1980s, citizens were enjoying one of the highest standards of living in the world. While much has been written on the reasons why and how the Al-Sabah became a ruling dynasty, little is known about the nature of their authority and its relationship to Kuwait's social structure. Rivka Azoulay shows how despite the rapidity of change in the oil-rich, family-run emirate, it is the pre-oil dynamics of social and political life that dictate how society operates. The author shows that Kuwait's ambitious diversification plans to reduce oil-dependence by 2035 require a renegotiation of the regime's pact with society, which threatens the pre-oil alliances upon which the Al-Sabah's regime has been built.
Author : Souad M. Al-Sabah
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 33,19 MB
Release : 2014-05-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1786725002
Amidst political upheaval and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the State of Kuwait emerged as an independent country under British protection in 1899, with Sheikh Mubarak Al Sabah widely accredited as the instrument of its foundation. But the path to power for Mubarak was not a simple or smooth one. The author here presents an original perspective on the difficulties and controversies surrounding Mubarak's ascension. With unparalleled insights and access to original sources she reveals the life, personality and politics of a man who, determined to secure a distinctive Kuwaiti state, helped to shape the modern Middle East. This biography provides a comprehensive overview of a time of significant political and social change in the Gulf when development, diplomacy, economics, finance and trade were both routes to political independence and the perpetuation of British domination. Remembered for his unyielding determination to boost the profile and wealth of Kuwait and establish his leadership at a turbulent time of regional war, Mubarak engineered major change for Kuwait. From the negotiations of the 1899 Anglo-Kuwait Agreement, during which Mubarak sought to outfox Lord Curzon and other British officials, to his ambitions to tame tribal politics, the author here presents a unique portrait of the man who transformed Kuwait from an Ottoman sub-province to an independent state.
Author : Alan Rush
Publisher : Garnet & Ithaca Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 31,46 MB
Release : 1987
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780863720819
Author : Leif Stenberg
Publisher : Gingko Library
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 36,34 MB
Release : 2022-08-30
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1914983017
A history of contemporary Kuwait as seen through the life of an individual Kuwaiti. This book reviews and analyzes the modern history of Kuwait through the life of Abd al-Aziz Sa‘ud al-Babtain, a wealthy businessman, philanthropist, and poet. He is the head of a large, influential international cultural foundation based in Kuwait City. Abd al-Aziz’s life story tightly interweaves with modern discussions on the history of the state of Kuwait. There are very few books taking a collective grip on the history of the state of Kuwait. Likewise, there are very few studies about the generation of Gulf individuals who experienced, benefitted from, and even suffered from the discovery of oil, and who has been a crucial part of socioeconomic and cultural developments in countries like Kuwait in recent history. By constructing a cohesive overview of the modern history of Kuwait enriched by the life of an individual that has lived through the better part of that particular history, this book fills a lacuna in contemporary scholarship on the Middle East, and especially the Arabian or the Persian Gulf.
Author : Madawi Al-Rasheed
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 204 pages
File Size : 19,3 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Arabian Gulf Region
ISBN : 0415331358
This book challenges the definitions of globalisation and transnationalism as a one way process generated mainly by the Western World and the view that the latter is a twentieth century phenomenon.
Author : Guillemette Crouzet
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 10,20 MB
Release : 2022-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 0228015014
The “Middle East” has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored. Few question the origin of the term or the boundaries of the region, commonly understood to have emerged in the twentieth century after World War I. Guillemette Crouzet offers a new account in Inventing the Middle East. The book traces the idea of the Middle East to a century-long British imperial zenith in the Indian subcontinent and its violent overspill into the Persian Gulf and its hinterlands. Encroachment into the Gulf region began under the expansionist East India Company. It was catalyzed by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and heightened by gunboat attacks conducted in the name of pacifying Arab “pirates.” Throughout the 1800s the British secured this crucial geopolitical arena, transforming it into both a crossroads of land and sea and a borderland guarding British India’s western flank. Establishing this informal imperial system involved a triangle of actors in London, the subcontinent, and the Gulf region itself. By the nineteenth century’s end, amid renewed waves of inter-imperial competition, this nexus of British interests and narratives in the Gulf region would occasion the appearance of a new name: the Middle East. Charting the spatial, political, and cultural emergence of the Middle East, Inventing the Middle East reveals the deep roots of the twentieth century’s geographic upheavals.
Author : James Onley
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 49,20 MB
Release : 2007-11-22
Category : History
ISBN : 0191607762
The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj is a study of one of the most forbidding frontier zones of Britain's Indian Empire. The Gulf Residency, responsible for Britain's relationship with Eastern Arabia and Southern Persia, was part of an extensive network of political residencies that surrounded and protected British India. Based on extensive archival research in both the Gulf and Britain, this book examines how Britain's Political Resident in the Gulf and his very small cadre of British officers maintained the Pax Britannica on the waters of the Gulf, protected British interests throughout the region, and managed political relations with the dozens of Arab rulers and governors on both shores of the Gulf. James Onley looks at the secret to the Gulf Residency's effectiveness - the extent to which the British worked within the indigenous political systems of the Gulf. He examines the way in which Arab rulers in need of protection collaborated with the Resident to maintain the Pax Britannica, while influential men from affluent Arab, Persian, and Indian merchant families served as the Resident's 'native agents' (compradors) in over half of the political posts within the Gulf Residency.
Author : Jarmo T. Kotilaine
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 23,33 MB
Release : 2023-08-16
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 100092176X
Tracing the development journey of the Arabian Gulf region with a forward-looking perspective, this book describes how a combination of good fortune, creative experimentation, and determination has enabled the region to achieve prosperity. Today, the Arabian Gulf is well positioned to assume a pivotal role in the new global order. Forced to balance an extreme climate and acute resource constraints, but also an exceptional location, the region’s progress and prosperity have historically been precarious and vulnerable to external shocks. Efforts to transcend resource dependency have typically involved proactive attempts to enable other economic activities. This book argues that, while conventional economic diversification is making headway, the Gulf region is in fact amidst a far more holistic transformation that positions it for a pivotal role in the emerging multipolar global order. It now offers globally competitive regulations and world-class infrastructure at the heart of the Old World, flanked by two fast-growing continents. It has become the hub of choice for a growing share of inter-continental flows of people, trade, and capital, and has established strong economic ties in all directions. This book shows how, despite many risks and challenges, the region possesses the forward-looking vision and necessary resilience that can finally liberate it from its long-standing "resource curse" and a development paradigm that looks likely to provide the foundation for sustained well-being in the decades ahead. The scope and rigor of the book make it suitable as a reference on the Arabian Gulf and for those interested in global affairs and economic development, as well as policymakers and the business community.
