What should Americans know about the countries of the Arabian Gulf?
J.B: As nation states, the Arabian Gulf countries are very young. Bahrain, for example, was born in 1973, out of independence from British colonialism. And the UAE, United Arab Emirates, also dates back just to the early 1970s as a sovereign state with a seat at the UN. There are six countries in the Arabian Gulf, and if you go back a hundred years, there were none. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t leadership and political organization. In fact, there is some continuity between the leadership of the Arabian Gulf today and patriarchal arrangements dating back three centuries. T tribes that are now ruling families in Bahrain, Dubai, Sharjah, and Riyadh were in control of those areas long before the advent of nationalism.. Clans and tribal confederations became political leaders, and as they emerged into the light of nationalism and sovereignty, the tribal organization of politics and culture was grafted onto the state system. Many of those old tribal names are now royal names as these
