Kuwait Under The Empires Literature Search Methodology

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Abstract

This literature review employs the most recent representative studies of Kuwait “before oil”

looking especially at the governing structure, trading system, social/political institutions at two

different periods, both taking place “before oil”, the first under Turkish rule that lasted from

Kuwait’s founding in the early 18

Century to the late 19

Century when the British Empire

extended its protection making of Kuwait its protectorate. It is hypothesized that despite the

scorn in which the Turkish example is held compared to the seemingly more progressive ways of

the British Empire, Kuwait thrived under the authority of the former and faced ruin in the

insensitive period of British rule. The methodology of the literature is employed to look closely

at trading patterns, trading routes and trading policies to seek an answer to the bitter and unusual

division between two equally prosperous sections of the ruling class, the wealthy merchants and

the hereditary extended family of rulers. It is hoped that by comparing the political institutions,

social organization and trade policies from the founding of Kuwait until the turn of the last

century under Turkish rule with the decay of established institutions under the British rule, there

may be found not only reasons for such an unusual division within Kuwait’s ruling class, but in

addition provide a defense of traditional empires and their ways compared to modern

imperialism which is thought falsely to have protected and advanced Kuwait from the backward

embrace of the Ottoman Empire. Special attention will be paid to the specific example of the

pearl industry as the basis of comparison.

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Kuwait under the Empires: Literature Search Methodology

Introduction

Kuwait was founded by related families of the Anizah tribal confederation which suffered

draught and famine. One group of families loosely related to one another, the Bani Utub,

searched for sustenance until they came to a bay from where they could go no further, having

arrived at the very tip of the Persian Gulf, which at the time meant very little beyond that the sea

was ahead and the desert behind. Kuwait thus had a very humble beginning, its people existing

on fish, and by growing whatever can be grown in a place where water is so scarce that houses

before the finding of oil were built with roofs in a cup shape to contain water, special songs

welcoming rain sung and names given to different kinds of rain (Kuwaiti Times , 2018). But for

Kuwait, for good or for ill, not infrequently both at the same time, geography is destiny. Robert

Fletcher’s inspired title “Between the Devil of the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea” (2015)

identifies the source of the kind of tensions and contradictions involving an outward orientation

along with an equally important backward glance to a more primitive life, a daily struggle for

survival in the desert under the general protection of the Bani Khalid tribal federation, and owing

fealty to a decaying Ottoman Empire. Fletcher’s purpose is to follow up on the lead of an earlier

researcher Boaz who thought to underline how very strongly Kuwait depended on a desert route

of caravans and trade with desert people in addition to the more glamorous route by dhow to

distant places on the coast of India and Africa.

“The one historical gift geography gave the tribes of the Gulf before oil was a gift

default: an outward orientation,” Fletcher (2015) tells us, recalling just how much is gained when

a tribal culture just barely able to sustain itself from one day to the next finds itself at the apex of

all trade coming by boat from the Indian Ocean through the Persian (sometimes Arabian) Gulf. If

Kuwait were a house its front door hosted ships of the East India Company and joined the

classier exchange in pearls that went about the ships of the British Empire in dhows on water,

and from a different direction camels carrying wheat, coffee, rice, sugar and wood, all of which

would have been heavily taxed if they had arrived at nearby Ottoman dominated Basra. In fact,

the social-political structures were set in place that lasted and caused prosperity for centuries,

rather under the radar and in a space left by the Ottoman Empire withdrawing and British Empire

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not yet ready to take its place from the early 18

Century to the late 19

Century when this once

hidden corner of the world that found itself pursued simultaneously by the Ottoman Empire,

Russia, Germany, Great Britain, and the Saudi clan. The commercial, religious and cultural

networks had bound Kuwait happily with the Indian Ocean world also linked with the caravans

that brought dates, coffee, horses and other trading items through traditional desert paths in an

exchange that lasted peacefully for over a century. Kuwait was just down the road from India

and Iraq, India and Iran, ready to trade beneath the radar of great powers, and incidentally giving

merchants in the absence of imperial overlords an unusual degree of pow which created a

balance of power between the rulers and the merchants that has not yet left Kuwaiti politics.

Then a deeply entrenched and valuable system of rule needing little supervision was

interrupted by the redrawing of borders and the coming of western tutelage of a civilization

whose ancient ways may yet prove superior the western reforming ideas, then and now, as

evidence from our literature search will demonstrate. In fact, a uniquely harmonious society in

Kuwait was possible by the making available of space by the preoccupation of the Ottoman

Empire with its European threat and need to modernize its inefficient empire at a time when the

English East India Company’s primary centre of production on the Indian subcontinent and her

main market in Europe passed through the Persian Gulf where Kuwait had one of the few deep

water ports for British ships, save for the Ottoman run port of Basra. In that gap between an

empire not fully established and one already spent, a commercial town with the mostfascinating

features took root. How Kuwait fared under these empires “before oil” is the subject of this

qualitative literature survey.

Mary Ann Tetreault (1991: 568-569) put it wonderfully:

In the case of Kuwait, the instrumental power of the state vis 'a vis domestic society was

extensive, at least in part as a result of years of British intervention favoring a strong

ruling family over a more democratic organization of the state and the regime. Even so,

the scope of the ruling family's power, exercised in contravention of traditional as well as

modern constitutional and legal institutional structures, was widely opposed This makes

it critical to distinguish the state, defined as the set of coordinated institutions and

processes that makes authoritative decisions for society, from the government, defined as

the rules that govern state-society relations

We shall see that process developed by comparing the early and late period of Kuwait before oil

Methodology

The often noted complex divisions that characterize contemporary Kuwait society sets all

those who are not expatriates at each other’s throat with merchant families unforgiving of the

ruling family both exhibiting contempt for the Bedouin “other”, the Bedu, all leading of late to a

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political paralysis, with constantly changing parliaments strong enough to withstand the wishes

of the ruling family and their long-time associates. The attention to complex and interesting

current events though obscures the roots of the current crisis in practices and institutions that are

rather inexactly referred to as “before oil”, with the proud maritime tradition celebrated in

museums and historical memory altogether shorn of its context in a system established and

functioning astonishingly well within the loose framework of the Turkish empire and in constant

crisis under British tutelage, as the following literature search hopes to demonstrate..

This literature review employs the most recent representative studies of Kuwait “before oil”

looking especially at the governing structure, trading system, social/political institutions at two

different periods, both taking place “before oil”, the first under Turkish rule that lasted from

Kuwait’s founding in the early 18

Century to the late 19

Century when the British Empire

extended its protection making of Kuwait its protectorate. It is hypothesized that despite the

scorn in which the Turkish example is held compared to the seemingly more progressive ways of

the British Empire, Kuwait thrived under the authority of the former and faced ruin in the

insensitive period of British rule. Let’s look at the evidence.

Nostalgia had painted pre-oil Kuwait in a deeply favourable light for its public spaces,

social cohesion and a meaningful if hard life. If we look more closely though, the period named

“before oil” belongs to two distinct period which will be compared to follow and verify the

hypothesis that the ocean and desert was a circuit of trade which was enclosed by mutually

antagonistic powers drawing the borders of nation-states in the Gulf, thereby destroying what is

most valuable about them

Kuwait in the 18

and 19

Centuries

In Kuwait, the issue of leadership, like all other social/political issues, experienced that

force from two directions which was characteristic from the first in the very location of the port

by a spacious Bay which remained largely unknown, save for brief remarks from the occasional

traveller reported in memoirs of their travels. It is reported as the most fortunate and harmonious

of societies, one that had been able to retain its understanding of desert ways and links with

trading networks in caravans that come through the desert, all the while opening up with the aid

of Indian investment houses ship building and date export industries in a place which had neither

wood to build dhows, nor soil and water to grow fruit. Although the proximity to the river

systems of Shatt al-Arab, gave it the necessary potential to become a shipping centre and a

regional market, in fact there was but an empty fort from an ill-fated Portuguese attempt at

expansion and no existing town or significant settled community. How despite its small

geographic and demographic size, Kuwait grew in what was reported a thriving commercial

settlement had much to do with the fact that the settlement was uniquely positioned just out of

reach of the Turkish Empire which held on to Basra, now in Iraq, as its important port and

source of revenue Precisely because of its small geographic and demographic size, and the

protection of the Bani Khalid, who ruled eastern Arabia since seizing control from the Ottomans

some few years before the Utub arrived., Kuwait linked up with a network of actors

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simultaneously working with agencies in the maritime and desert arenas, essentially up for grabs,

but not yet the object of desire or interest of great powers.

Interestingly, by 1762, the new colony established a form of rule that took the opportunity of the

death of the ruler of the Bani Khalid tribe, Shaykh Sulayman bin Muhammad, to install a ruling

family of “shaikhs” which was the characteristic form of desert tribal leadership, but with

extraordinarily unusual features of having merchant families create and subsidize a position

which normally comes with great authority and power to gain tributes, but award it to one of the

poorest families on the island in a badly subsidized position. That is how Shaikh Sabah bin Jaber

bin Adhbi , the first of the El Sabah rulers who last to this day became the leader of Kuwait. In

fact, the three main families of the Al-Sabah, the Al-Jalahima, and the Al-Khalifa decided to

divide responsibility among themselves, with Al-Jalahima in charge of the lucrative maritime

trade and the Al-Khalifa family incidentally the future rulers of Bahrain, dealing with trade in the

other direction, with desert tribes.

. According to a report ,

[In 1716]... the chiefs of the most important three tribes that inhabited Kuwait entered

into an alliance. These were Sabah bin Jabar bin Salman bin Ahmad, Khalifah bin

Muhammed and Jabar bin Rahmat al’ilbi (the chief of the Jalaahmeh). The conditions...

[stated that] Sabah will have leadership in the affairs of government... Khalifah will have

leadership of the financial affairs in commerce; and Jabar will control the affairs of work on

the sea. All profits were to be equally divided among them. [Quoted in Ismael 1982:23]

Free to take their own direction under the radar and paying taxes to no one, Kuwaiti

traders went first to Basra to pick up dates that are sold all the way to the coast of Africa, from

where the kind of wood out of which fast-moving dhows are built are brought back, allowing for

profits to be employed in the Bedouin market to buy camel-milk cheese, sugar and similar food

stuff. Until late in the 19

Century, having the city’s gates, east and west, open to free enterprise

from fortunate locations stretching far into old and newly established trading routes, all under the

rule of a preoccupied Ottoman Empire, allowed for a very high level of social cohesion, given

the generally win-win situation which prevailed in the economic sphere.

Frederick Anscombe had a chance to study Turkish archives to see just why the great

Ottoman Empire had such difficulty maintaining control over valuable lands that eventually fell

to Britain, and came to the conclusion that it was a shabbily run empire that had simply not

inspired much confidence in its allies, or for that matter, much fear in their enemies. He wrote of

Ottoman imperial ineptnss:

This record of ineptitude was the result of conditions...that also afflicted Iraq. Too

little money, too little manpower, too little equipment hamstrung policy makers. More

debilitating were corruption and the related increase in popular dissatisfaction with

unfair, arbitrary rule. More important, however, was the problem of communication.

Corruption flourished because officials had little supervision or fear of retribution.

Policy had to be shaped in Istanbul without the benefit of prompt, accurate

information about events in distant areas. (1997:91)

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Kuwait under the empire was free to run its own affairs. The visitors were astonished at

the poverty and very high level of honesty of a “ shaikh” in an obviously prosperous place where

a great deal of revenue could have been generated, at least if the desert “shaikhs” in their shifting

alliances and violent ways had been rulers. The crisis of leadership establishing a ruling family

bin Kuwait was resolved in an untypical but eminently sensible way, given that among the

merchants at a time when fortunes could be made along new and established trade paths, there

was little about community leadership that was attractive, though an administrator for the

community was desperately needed. That was how the ruling family came to be chosen from one

without resources and only recently escaped from Basra to take lodging in Kuwait’s market with

his family where he became known for being the kind of person who gets along with everybody,

is trusted by all, and therefore called upon to settle the many disputes that arise among

merchants. That was how the families of the Utub clan came by an unusual means to gain the

kind of “shaikh” they needed through a mechanism that eases disharmony, one which exists to

this day, a gathering called “dīwāniyya”. Mary Ann Tétreault (1905) thinks of this institution

fulfilling the role of a sea-faring gathering to trade travel information, combining the family

gathering to support collective social, economic, and political interests

Oddly, Shaikh Sabah bin Jaber bin Adhbi was the ruler whose impartiality and

imperviousness to bribes was ensured by his very poverty. He had no taxation powers or means

to enforce the law when power was held by the merchants who gathered in male groups to

discuss matters over tea and a mild narcotic called qat causing ideas to be expressed as

thoughtful propositions, and also more creatively as songs or poems in their “dīwāniyya”. This

is ultimately a large guestroom where the like-minded in business and politics gather in what has

been rightly called a neutral space between the private household talk among family and friends

and society as a whole where such intermediate space was very much needed (Tetreault

2001:206). There was in fact in this public-private gathering a kind of quasi parliament which

had a remarkable persistence and testifies to the value Kuwaitis have in this institution of social

harmony born at this time,

The administrative nature of the ruler’s position prevents his travelling and trading,

which is the only possible way to gain a fortune in Kuwait. But every business community has

need also to keep records, resolve disputes and serve as the contact person and the community’s

face to the world. In fact, there was in this instance a triumvirate that really held power in the

community dividing responsibilities and dolling out meager funds for the shaikh’s family’s

upkeep.That the community’s leading family was poor but honest was often the most striking

feature of the reports filed by occasional visitors, as in 1756 when the honesty of the badly

dressed son of the chief, Mubarak, was described by a visitor or in 1861, Jabar, the Shaikh of the

time, stood out as “among the worst dressed and ill-lodged among the residents” (Crystal,

1995:4). That the Shaikh in administrative charge of a port simply can’t be away means that the

family could never gain independent wealth, and need consult the heads of the most influential

merchant families about all the major policy issues, because the latter’s “political power grew

from [its] economic strength” (Crystal, 1995: 4). The Al Khalifah of Bahrain by conty\rast

collected tribute from a large number of tribes in Qatar between the 1760s and 1860s. The

amount of tribute theyreceived before the mid-nineteenth century is unknown, but by the 1860s

thy were collecting Ks 9,000 (Rs 3,600) annually (Onely, 2004).

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Kuwaiti society thus uniquely divided its tasks with the ruling El Sabah family

administering the political affairs, the merchants selling and buying commodities, and the desert

people, nearly always forgotten, employed in fishing, shipping and pearl diving, Successional

infighting complicated by an effectively granted Kuwait their independence (Abu Hakima

1983:5, 19It all looked very positive as long as the major powers had little interest in this part of

the world, Certainly, a tribute paid to a neighbouring tribe for protection is a great deal less

onerous than having tax authorities at the port determined to raise as much as possible as in

Basra. It looked good for Kuwait at the start of the 19

Century. By 1829, the area of Kuwait

was involved in both local and international trade. There was trade with inner Najd and

Northern Najd as supplies of wheat, coffee, and Indian produce came through Kuwait.

Kuwait imported cloth, rice, sugar, wood, spices and cotton, and coffee from Yemen,

tobacco and dried fruits from Persia, wheat and dates from Basra, and cloth and dates

from Bahrain. Kuwait exported ghee butter and horses (which it bought from

neighbouring Bedouin tribes), and also exported pearls. Horses were brought to Kuwait

instead of Basra to avoid paying Ottoman duties (Oskay,2010: 29).

What then was daily life like in Kuwait in its days under the watchful eye of the British

concerned only with keeping pirates and Turkey away, and little concerned with the carrying

trade that enriched the Kuwaiti merchants who benefited greatly from the almost complete

absence of dangers to them or restrictions on them. Still, life was hard when tthe basic necessities

of life, including food, water, and firewood, had to imported to a place possessed of nothing but

a harbour, pearls and fish Al-Nakib (2014) relates how there seemed to be a co-extensive public

and private harmony for

people were not obligated to subsume their own traditions and backgrounds in order to fit

into one consensual, mono-vocal cultural identity. The multiplicity of languages, tastes, and

styles was precisely what created the social life and cultural milieu of Kuwait as a port town.

Its very identity was the fact that it was a hybrid place, and from this . . . emerged a tolerant

and open society (75)

The harvesting of pearls was left unregulated, similar to the trade in dates grown in

Basra, but sold all the way to the coast of Africa by a fleet of dhows down the western part of the

Arabian Gulf and Shatt al-Arab waterways to Malabar, Zanzibar, and Mombasa. The return trip

allowed for business in spices, ropes, teak, and the materials needed for boatbuilding, for it was

well known that Kuwait made the finest boats in its thriving boat-building industry from

materials taken from the Indian coast (Al-Khatrash, 1970: 1-2).It all looked very different by the

end of the century when the rivalries of European powers ensured that Kuwait would find no

way to escape powerful naval forces from the west and the religious and nationalist forces from

the east, in many ways the ocean and the desert once a source of profit become now one of

danger. It began with a position called the British Resident keeping an eye on things, as we know

when Colonel Lewis Pelly forced Kuwait on September 12, 1868 to sign an agreement, their first

with outside powers, to suppress piracy (Al-Khatrash, 1970: 15).

It should be noted at this stage that the paucity of hard data about Kuwait’s import and export

had a great deal to do with the fact that until the turn of the last century, conducting business off

the grid, far from imperial powers and their taxation authorities, Kuwait’s records were kept only

in the private safes of merchant families who decided affairs to their advantage. By comparison,

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we are entering when British authorities give an accurate picture in annual reports recording the

prosperity of Kuwait at the turn of the 20

Century, at least until the collapse of trade in the 1929

Great Depression.

Road to the Petrostate: Kuwait in the 20

Century

That Kuwait is a city that faces the ocean and has its back to the city has been a

consistent theme of this essay. At first, the clans that settled in what is now Kuwait had both as a

barrier, then a great opportunity for unrestricted trade from an isolated location, far from the

great powers. Until the end of the 19

Century, the territory belonged to a very loosely run

Ottoman Empire occupied year after year with rebellions in its European possessions, war with

Russia and then the doubtful protection of England which insisted on building a trading

warehouse called “Factory” down the road from Kuwait at Basra. That sufficed for the needs of

the British Empire, and Kuwait remained off the grid, at least until it became clear to the British

that both Germany and Russia had their eyes on what has obviously become the crown jewel of

the British Empire in the days of Queen Victoria who was also the Empress of India. Just as oil

now flows through the Gulf, so the wealth of Britain’s possessions in the East flowed past the

little principalities like Kuwait. Then a serious proposal was advanced by Germany to build a

railroad to Kuwait, while Russia thought to use Kuwait’s harbour as a coal station. Great Britain

became uneasy (Al-Khatrash, 1970: 37-44).Kuwait now had an important place in the great

power rivalries and alliances that were so different from the kind of family rivalries and clan

wars characteristic of the Arabian desert,

British interests were extremely limited and involved keeping rival empires from Indian

shipping through a series of local agreements like the one Britain signed with Kuwait in 1899.In

the end, Britain took the Gulf states under its protection under very different dispensation than

would be expected by those familiar with tribal protection, which may be costly but at least gave

protection were you to be attacked either by internal or external enemies. Put differently, that

tribute and gifts flowed to the Bani Khalif tribe ensured that any conspiracy or threat would be at

least investigated, perhaps punished, even if the threat came from family, where incidentally it is

most likely to come. Not so with a great imperial power which would just as soon deal with one

or another leader and takes no interest in “native” war at least until its interests are threatened.

Kuwait under British protection had to identify its ships by its own flag which ensured that its

most important assets could be identified and retribution visited should Kuwait remember or

Turkey of the Ottoman Empire remind Kuwait that it too belongs to the Turkish Empire, not

England. By the way, Britain was willing in 1913 to sign an agreement to win over Turkey,

allowing Kuwait to be joined with Basra as a Turkish province, all the while gaining an

agreement without reciprocal responsibility to that would commit Kuwait “not to cede, sell,

lease, mortgage or give for occupation and any other purpose” any part of Kuwait, thus signing

over the land, presumably for personal protection and that of family property as reward for

breaking with Turkey’s mild rule. At the signing, the British representative would not guarantee

protection at any level, which caused Mubarak’s own brothers to refuse their signature (Finnie,

1992:14-20)

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Mubarak the Great, as he styled himself, was caught up in a classic situation brought

about by the devious nature of desert politics, made worse when allied with Britain which had

knowledge, resources and interest only to project its power by the sea, and had no interest in

fighting for merchant interests after Mubarak al-Sabah assassinated the sixth ruler of Kuwait

Muhammad al-Sabah (1892- 1896) and Jarrah al Sabah ,. his brother and next in line to the

throne to ruled autocratically, appointing only close and loyal followers outside of his own

family, knowing that retribution could follow. The Kuwait system of rule changed from the

Islamic principle of Shura calling for consultation between the ruler and the ruled to one of open

dictatorship.

Mubarak al-Sabah and Salim al- Sabah who followed as “shaik” simply had not thought

that they had power to turn long cooperation, dependence and trade over Kuwait’s desert

sovereignty over the Bedouins coming increasingly under the sway of the Saud clan under Ibn

Saud, his Moslem Brotherhood ort Ikhwan intent on imposing tariff and therefore direct control

over Kuwait,. having occupied the coastal strip stretching from Kuwait to what will be named

after the clan, Saudi Arabia,Mubarak was faced with the meteoric rise of Ibn Saud and an ISIS

like Wahabbi sect called the Ihwan coming from out of the desert as the British were debating

whether to grant the Saudi clan a seaport to keep under control, evidently having Kuwait in

mind. Meanwhile, Mubarak was himself uneasy on the throne which he took desert style by

murdering his two brothers who were, like most Kuwaiti citizens, happy to continue association

with fellow Moslems of the Ottoman empire whose rule was by no means onerous, even if it was

corrupt and inefficient (Oskay, 2010:33).

We are now in a different world in which trade is regulated and closely watched to

extract the maximum profit. which included setting strict limits by season on pearl harvesting,

creating a local fish production industry and in other ways finding a place for Kuwait within a

system of protectorates which now includes Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Transjordan

(Jordan and Palestine), which begins the time when Kuwaitis begun rightly to fear that they

would be swallowed up by their neighbours, and find Britain indifferent to their fate. This is a

long-standing existential crisis in the lives of Kuwait’s citizens made in no way easier by the fact

that Britain showed itself neglectful when the newly constituted kingdom of Saudi Arabia

organized a brotherhood, an Ishwan,.to seize Kuwait and earn for itself a modern port and a

means to spread the stern Wahhabi doctrine to where the more easy-going Kuwaitis practice a

milder version of Islam.

In 1919, a war erupted which led to Kuwait’s repeated defeats in battle, though usually these

involved skirmishes and border raids throughout 1919–1920, followed a trade blockade against

Kuwait for 14 years from 1923 until 1937. There was not much support.

As far as Britain was concerned, Kuwait’s

politics seemed internecine and its topography was largely unknown; this was a black hole

into which they [ Britain] might be sucked. Officials were endlessly warned against

becoming entangled in desert affairs, just as they feared Kuwait itself might be swallowed by

its forces. An Anglo-Ottoman agreement of 1913 never ratified actively sought to absolve the

British of responsibility for defence beyond the town (Fletcher, 2015: 56).

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The British were not much help when Ibn Saud is the course of establishing the nation

named after his clan sought to capture Kuwait resulting in sporadic border clashes throughout

1919-1920 which led to the death of hundreds of Kuwaitis. That was followed by a trade

blockade against Kuwait for 14 years from 1923 until 1937. The British only drove Ibn Saud

away when he besieged the Kuwaitis at the Red Castle. Kuwait had no representative at the

Uqair conference of 1922 which was used by the British to give away approximately two-thirds

of Kuwait's territory (Huth and Allee, 2002).

It was the wealth of Kuwait that interested the British.In this context, it would be well to

compare how closely the pearl trade was watched and its results recorded in the annual financial

reports British agents filed of what amounted officially to fully one third of Kuwait’s annual

income during a season that ran only from June to September when the demand for pearl divers

cleared Kuwait town of able-bodied men, and built relationships of profit sharing and debt that

bound society together” (Fletcher, 2015: 56). That meant in essence the literally hundreds of

boats, with 70 or 80 added each season, took off in a grand fleet that employed the Bedu

seasonally, enriched the ruling family and the British, with still enough profits to ensure that

Kuwait remained for a time a very wealthy place indeed, especially since Mubarak Al-Sabah

(1896-1915) promoted the interests of Kuwait’s maritime industry gaining valuable investment

from the merchant houses of India.

Then everything fell apart, east and west, both with the trade in pearls over the seas at

one end and an abrupt end to the caravan trade at the other gate, for very different reasons. For

one thing, Japanese cultured pearls came on the market, and then the Great Depression made

matters much worse. “In 1921 only 320 of Kuwait’s 700 pearling boats set out for the banks; by

1931, many had not been to sea for years,” Fletcher (2015: 58) reports. The ruler in the end

compelled the near bankrupt pearl merchants to sell properties to pay the many connecting

human threads that tie communities to what had been a very profitable and predictable industry.

Matters became still worse when Ibn Saud who claimed ownership of Mecca and Medina

aroused the Bedouins of the desert to cut their traditional links to Kuwait, which now mounted a

wall and kept Bedouins who still traded to stay beyond the city gates, this establishing a line of

citizens from the old families doing badly, and the Bedu, no longer needed, forced back to

subsistence existence in the desert.

The extended El-Sabah family as honoured if poor administrators, the merchant class

meeting in cheerful qat chewing circles able to exert real political pressure while providing work

for the Bedouin population of Bedus and maintaining positive trade and political relationship

with the varied grouping of desert tribes and local administrators in all directions.

But a great deal of that success depended on keeping far away Western powers in deadly

trade competition with each other , eventually to fight a world war on a scale of destruction never

seen before, a war continuing to cause serious harm long after peace treaties were signed in the

areas where Kuwait traded. To employ pearl fishing as a sign of economic health or illness, there

were from 70-80 boats added to a growing fleet in 1912 that could harvest pearls at leisure with

an open season all year round and the freedom to take the boat wherever the boat could sail at

any time, and to carry any cargo agreed upon from any port stretching from the Gulf to the coasts

of India and Africa. Thus, the merchant class, the extended ruling family, and the Bedouin

working class called Bedus constituted a dense network of predictable, mutually-reinforcing and

professional relationships that were deeply disrupted after the war, never again to regain that

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level of trust which governed the inter-action of major Kuwaiti social groups for centuries. By

1939, there were less than a hundred boats in Kuwait, and these not doing much business,

thereby bringing to an end Kuwait’s promising ship-building industry, all with fearful

consequences for class relationships that has not been resolved to our days (Fletcher, 2015:58).

It was hard for a merchant-class operating under the radar of global imperial systems now

to come under the protection of the most powerful empire of its time which began by redrawing

boundaries and setting up kingdoms without much thought to local sensitivities, as long as tribal

chiefs sign away their people’s rights, whatever the actual title of the chief or circumstances of

that signing. In this instance, Mubarak the Great had taken power by slaying his two brothers,

and found himself under intense suspicion reinvigorated Ottoman Empire anxious to regain

control over wide areas that were neglected and in general slipping away. Claiming to have

narrowly saved Kuwait from occupation by Turkish troops, Mubarak signed an agreement in

1898 which stipulated that Britain had sole right to conduct Kuwait’s foreign policy, and

moreover Kuwait could trade only with Britain and its permission. Now, the British agent and

his department constituted a powerful constraint on the kind of open, free-market operations in

which Kuwait’s shrewd merchants thrived for centuries. A yearly account of all transactions by

sea was filed under Trade Reports with the British government, which also went out in

inspection boats to collect taxation on the gathered pearls where they could be counted during

the two months when the town seemed deserted with everybody on the seas looking for pearls, or

else looking to tax those looking for pearls (Fletcher, 2015: 57-62)

There came now a great falling out between the Al-Shahab ruling clan and the influential

merchant community forcefully asserting itself and pressing the ruling family for political

changes, at a time when strengthened by British support , the ruling family asserted a traditional

role of “shaiks” that was in fact unknown before in Kuwait “by allying with a powerful

protector…, a ruler…reinforced his position within his shaikhdom” (Onley, 2009: 12).

In practical terms, that meant new taxes, price controls, customs duties collected in

customs warehouses for close inspection with all the customs payments to be paid to the Sheikh

personally, which was especially offensive in that the Ottomans tried and failed many times to

introduce such warehouses and failed (Alghanim, 1998: 138-139). In 1921, another wave of

opposition employed the passing of Sheikh Salim Al Sabah (1917- 1921) to organize a shura or

consulting body as the resistance to the ruler had become more politically organised and

institutionalised, forcing the newly chosen Sheikh Ahmad Al Sabah (1921-1950) promised to

rule in accordance with merchants, though in the end the 13 members of the Council looked after

their own interest to join in support of the Al Sabah clan if their former status were restored,

causing a deep split in the opposition ( Crystal ,1995: 21) Another wave of merchant opposition

led to the establishment of a Legislative Assembly – majlis – in 1938 after the ruler of Kuwait

signed oil concessions and received payment not shared with the rest of the population (Zahlan,

1989: 28).

Discussion/ Conclusion

It is a sometimes claimed that today’s Kuwaitis for all their wealth lack the simple

happiness of their ancestors who travelled and traded great distances to build fortunes and led a

Name 12

good life, or what appears like that in cultures that have too much money and admire simplicity

like Kuwait. It is today a deeply divided society given to fierce debate between its powerful

merchant class and its ruling family. In fact, as this investigation sought to establish, the

political, social or trade mechanism that a community established on its own the meet its own

community needs from below, and counter the exploitative.

Name 13

Works Cited

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Persian Gulf in Modern Times: People, Ports, and History, edited by Lawrence G. Potter,

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Finnie, David H. Shifting Lines in the Sand: Kuwait's elusive frontier with Iraq. Harvard

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Huth, Paul K., and Todd L. Allee. The Democratic Peace and Territorial Conflict in the

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Kuwaiti Times (2018) Kuwaitis longed for rain, saved precious water in olden times.

news.kuwaittimes.net/website/kuwaitis-longed-rain-saved-precious-water-olden-times

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Onley, James. "The politics of protection in the Gulf: The Arab rulers and the British resident in

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Name 14

Okay, Ceyda. “Tribalism, State Formation and Citizenship in Kuwait.” Unpublished thesis for

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United Arab Emirates and Oman. Vol. 10. Routledge, 2016.

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