Allan G. Hill

The Economic Development of Kuwait

Kuwait’s economic development is not a history of steadily increasing wealth and prosperity. The State’s dependence on the entrepot trade of the Gulf and eastern Arabia laid it doubly vulnerable to political and economic factors largely beyond Kuwait’s control in both maritime and territorial realms. Just as the prosperity of the merchant community and its dependents in Kuwait saw successive periods of comfort and security, and then hardship and unease, so too did the growth of the city survive periods of growth and stagnation.

Health and Disease

Sweeping statements concerning the evil effects of urbanization are no more justified than the opposing view that urbanization ultimately leads to Utopia. A variety of incentives such as the degree of industrial development, anticipated increased earning power, the fading quality of the traditional pastoral or nomadic life and a host of other factors are all concerned in shaping the new environment and the individual’s reaction to it. But if we are going to take the rational view that urbanization should be the qualified and controlled immigration into and around an urban nucleus, we must distinguish it from “pseudo-urbanization” which is the exact antithesis, with the all too familiar shanty-towns radiating from or encircling the original organised settlement. For it is this hybrid form of urbanization which possesses all the potential for a rapid decline into the worst of slum conditions which breed mental, moral and physical degradation.

The Urbanization of Kuwait

Urbanization is not a wholly continuous process; in the Middle East, certainly, as Adams [1] has shown for Iraq, phases of urbanization alternate with phases of “ruralization”. This and the next Chapter trace both relatively constant physical elements and more fluid historical and economic changes which have affected urbanization in Kuwait. These themes are then followed through to the present day and identify historical and contemporary phases of urbanization.

Urbanization and Population Growth in the Middle East

Urbanization is as old as civilization and equally complex. It is a continuing process with world wide manifestations, making comprehensive accounts of its causal factors and geographic occurrence as elusive as its factual definition. But urbanization is not a uniform process operating through time; with a time span extending from the Neolithic to the present day, and a geographic spread covering the entire occupied surface of the earth, almost any generalizations will be severely stretched to encompass even the salient aspects of such a process.

Trauma, Temperance, Tuberculosis and Toxoplasmosis

Traumatic death and injury are nothing new to the Arab of Arabia, despite the alarming figures of automobile accidents which are increasing yearly.

Population Growth in Kuwait

Parallel with the rapid post-1945 expansion of the economy of Kuwait was an equally rapid process of demographic growth. Between the first reliable estimate of Kuwaits population early this century and the most recent census of population in 1965, the number of Kuwait’s inhabitants grew by 1,234 per cent (Table 9). While the numbers involved in this increase are comparatively small on a world scale, they assume mum greater significance within the narrow confines of the territory of Kuwait. Further, this process of demographic growth, representing a combination of in-migration coupled with extremely high rates of natural increase, introduced into Kuwait ethnic groups quite new to eastern Arabia. The majority of the new arrivals were derived from the Arab culture area, but significant numbers of people from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas are currently resident in Kuwait.

Preventive Medicine in Kuwait

Kuwait, along with her neighbours, is the heir to some three hundred years of attempts, initially by the East India Company of England, to control the ravages of epidemic disease along the shores of the Persian Gulf. The history of these early struggles, which admittedly were primarily designed to allow the flow of trade to continue, is told in the next Chapter.

Heat Illness and Desert Survival

Eskimos live with reasonable comfort in sub-zero centigrade temperatures inside the Arctic Circle and Badu in the Arabian and North African deserts have survived for many hundreds of years living at the other extremes of temperature in excess of 50° Centigrade. Their secret is threefold; adaptability, controlled expenditure of energy and the development of a satisfactory micro-climate. Man, like other animals and plants but more successfully, has learnt to adapt as a study of the various arctic and desert inhabitants has shown, and they reveal many analogies. In the Arabian desert the above ground flora are xerophytic with long penetrating roots designed to reach the moisture deep under the sand while the leaves are xerophyllic, very tough and presenting the smallest possible surface to the abrasive winds. Many of them have at the same time developed thorns to discourage scavengers and enable them to survive. The animals on the other hand, are either burrowing or have developed remarkable powers for the conservation of fluid and electrolytes, and the loss of heat.

The Ecology of Daily Life

Eastern Arabia offers very few opportunities for the development of a permanent system of agriculture. Evaporation and evapotranspiration far exceed the recorded precipitation which only occasionally rises above 150 mm annually. Along the eastern margins of the sand sea however, localized upwellings of fresh water in the province of Al-Hasa provide for the only sizeable concentrations of farmers between lower Iraq and the cultivators of Buraimi and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman. In the oases of eastern Arabia-centres such as Qatif, Hofuf, or Al-Hasa itself-water is available in productive aquifers a few metres below the ground surface. The same water sources (derived ultimately from water percolating at deep levels eastwards from the better watered mountain areas of western Arabia) provide Bahrain with its onshore and offshore springs of fresh water, forming an important element in the Shaikhdom’s growing economy.

The Early History of Kuwait

As a waterway linking Mesopotamia with the Indus Valley, the Persian Gulf was the scene of some of the earliest known voyages in the pre-Christian era. It was here that one of the world’s great trade routes developed, and perhaps it is not surprising when one reviews the inhospitality of its shores that it was the islands of the Gulf which predominated in the early phases of seaborne commerce, among the better known being Bahrain, Kharg and Hormuz. The evidence that Kuwait also had its portion of this considerable trade comes from the interesting excavations on Failaka Island in the mouth of Kuwait Bay. These have revealed Bronze-age dwellings suggesting the existence of a civilisation, probably Sumerian, some three thousand years ago. These people, together with the Elamites, the Egyptians, the Hittites of Anatolia and the Harrapan peoples of the Indus River Valley were the most ancient of all known civilisations. They were a non-Semitic people who originally occupied South Babylonia but gradually spread down to the Gulf to form a strong link with the Indus Valley nations.