In this new edition Ismael revises and updates her 1982 book (originally published with the subtitle "Social Change in Historical Perspective"), which examined the dynamics of class relations in pre- and post-oil Kuwait. To the earlier analysis she adds Kuwait's recent cataclysmic experiences of occupation, liberation and reconstruction. Ismael covers first the period from the founding of Kuwait in the early 18th century, when the land was inhabited by camel-breeding bedouins, to the beginning of oil exploration at the end of World War II. She describes its decline from a thriving centre of maritime commerce to an impoverished backwash by the end of the war. In the second part she addresses the post-war impact of oil wealth on Kuwait and examines resulting changes in Kuwaiti society. Describing transformations in the world oil economy in the 1980s, Ismael adds a section in order to chronicle changes in the political economy of the Persian Gulf that threatened the superstructure of the region (constituted of absolute monarchies in rentier states).
She sees Iraq's invasion of Kuwait as part of the larger political reality in the Gulf: change in the region will be forestalled by Western industrial powers at any price. Maintenance of the status quo now is dependent on military force, not political processes, and overt repression increasingly will replace co-optation as the means of quieting any opposition.
- ISBN10 0813011868
- ISBN13 9780813011868
- Publish Date 20 February 1993 (first published 1 January 1982)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 30 June 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University Press of Florida
- Edition 2nd Revised edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 256
- Language English