The Origins of Kuwait

The Origins of Kuwait PDF Author: B. Slot
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004094093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Since the discovery of the worlds third largest oil reserves within its borders, Kuwait has achieved international political prominence far exceeding its physical size. The country had already played a role in history before, however. Local sources take that history back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The present book takes the history of Kuwait still further back using European sources. It includes analyses and comparisons of indications on maps from the sixteenth century onwards and of references to the Kuwait area in documents produced by officials of the Dutch East India Company-the principal Western political and economic power in the Gulf during most of early modern times-, in British documents and in early travel accounts. The book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the political position of Kuwait in history vis-a-vis its neighbours, especially the Ottoman authorities in Basra.

The Origins of Kuwait

The Origins of Kuwait PDF Author: B. Slot
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004094093
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the discovery of the worlds third largest oil reserves within its borders, Kuwait has achieved international political prominence far exceeding its physical size. The country had already played a role in history before, however. Local sources take that history back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The present book takes the history of Kuwait still further back using European sources. It includes analyses and comparisons of indications on maps from the sixteenth century onwards and of references to the Kuwait area in documents produced by officials of the Dutch East India Company-the principal Western political and economic power in the Gulf during most of early modern times-, in British documents and in early travel accounts. The book is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the political position of Kuwait in history vis-a-vis its neighbours, especially the Ottoman authorities in Basra.

The Empires of the Near East and India

The Empires of the Near East and India PDF Author: Hani Khafipour
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231547846
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1103

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Book Description
In the early modern world, the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal empires sprawled across a vast swath of the earth, stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The diverse and overlapping literate communities that flourished in these three empires left a lasting legacy on the political, religious, and cultural landscape of the Near East and India. This volume is a comprehensive sourcebook of newly translated texts that shed light on the intertwined histories and cultures of these communities, presenting a wide range of source material spanning literature, philosophy, religion, politics, mysticism, and visual art in thematically organized chapters. Scholarly essays by leading researchers provide historical context for closer analyses of a lesser-known era and a framework for further research and debate. The volume aims to provide a new model for the study and teaching of the region’s early modern history that stands in contrast to the prevailing trend of examining this interconnected past in isolation.

The Art of Dhow-building in Kuwait

The Art of Dhow-building in Kuwait PDF Author: Yaʻqūb Yūsuf Ḥijjī
Publisher: Arabian Publishing Limited
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Ever since Kuwait emerged in the 18th century as a young maritime state with an extreme dependence on the sea, it has been renowned for the consummate skills of its sailors and dhow-builders. Kuwait's shipwrights became justly famed for the beauty, seaworthiness and practicality of their vessels, and the Kuwaiti boum became a symbol of Kuwait's maritime prowess on all the dhow routes linking Arabia, Iran, India and East Africa. This book describes in detail how Kuwaiti shipwrights built their vessels, in particular the boum .As with dhows everywhere, this was done entirely by hand and eye, without drawings of any kind. There are chapters on celebrated master builders and famous dhows, on sails, rigging and launching, and on tools and timber. There is also an extensive glossary of Kuwaiti nautical terms. Today the era of Kuwait's sailing dhows is long gone. In The Art of Dhow-building in Kuwait Dr Ya'qub Al-Hijji, himself a Kuwaiti maritime historian, provides a timely memorial of the craft industry which sustained this unique maritime nation. It is lavishly illustrated with drawings, colour photographs and remarkable old black-and-white images.The latter, from the first half of the 20th century, include many by Alan Villiers, and form an eloquent pictorial elegy on the passing of a great maritime tradition.

Kuwait in Pictures

Kuwait in Pictures PDF Author: Francesca Davis DiPiazza
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books
ISBN: 0822565897
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 82

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Book Description
Describes the geography, climate, wildlife, natural resources, history, politics, culture, economy, and government of Kuwait.

Mubarak Al-Sabah

Mubarak Al-Sabah PDF Author: B. Slot
Publisher: Arabian Publishing Limited
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
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.

India’s Founding Moment

India’s Founding Moment PDF Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.

Stories of Democracy

Stories of Democracy PDF Author: Mary Ann Tétreault
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
A sophisticated investigation of the shifting tides of democratic governance in modern Kuwait from 1921 to the present based on interviews both with political activists and members of the political elite, Stories of Democracy sheds light on a wide array of issues concerning Middle Eastern politics and democratic institutions in general. Mary Ann Tétreault explores how various political factions have sought to advance their own notions of Kuwaiti history and politics through distinctive popular appeals: (1) pro-democracy forces focusing on Kuwait's relationship to the universal values of the democratic world around them, and (2) anti-democrats proffering Arab and Muslim religious and cultural traditions. She explores how such dramatic events as the suspension of the Kuwaiti constitution in 1986 and the invasion by Iraq in 1990 occasioned major shifts in the course of the democracy movement. The current running through virtually all of the nation's political drama is the monolithic Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), used by the government as an instrument of economic strength to safeguard sovereignty in the absence of military might.

Europe’s India

Europe’s India PDF Author: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674972260
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
When Portuguese explorers first arrived in India, the maritime passage initiated an exchange of goods as well as ideas. European ambassadors, missionaries, soldiers, and scholars who followed produced a body of knowledge that shaped European thought about India. Sanjay Subrahmanyam tracks these changing ideas over the entire early modern period.

Of Myths and Migration

Of Myths and Migration PDF Author: Hussein Solomon
Publisher: Unisa Press
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
South Africa and immigration is debated in the entire Southern African region, and in wider debates on global migratory trends. This study engages with some strands of this topic, for example South Africa's international legal obligations to immigrants, and its moral obligations to the Southern African countries given the impact of the apartheid regime on the region. It considers the tremendous pressure exerted on South Africa as a relatively prosperous country in a region beset with the kinds of socio-economic conditions and instabilities likely to generate economic migrancy and refugees; and sets this against the reality of the country's capacity and limitations to absorb more people, given its own economic problems. It further discusses how to distinguish between 'illegal' immigrants and refugees, and advises on the role of the South African state and stances it should adopt to manage these phenomena effectively.

Conflict Unending

Conflict Unending PDF Author: Šumit Ganguly
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231507400
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The escalating tensions between India and Pakistan have received renewed attention of late. Since their genesis in 1947, the nations of India and Pakistan have been locked in a seemingly endless spiral of hostility over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Ganguly asserts that the two nations remain mired in conflict due to inherent features of their nationalist agendas. Indian nationalist leadership chose to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to prove that minorities could thrive in a plural, secular polity. Pakistani nationalists argued with equal force that they could not part with Kashmir as part of the homeland created for the Muslims of South Asia. Ganguly authoritatively analyzes why hostility persists even after the dissipation of the pristine ideological visions of the two states and discusses their dual path to overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, as well as the current prospects for war and peace in the region.