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In Kuwait, after the 1956 Suez War, workers at Ahmadi port brought oil transport and loading of British and French tankers to a halt, and protests and sabotage were so extensive that a nightly curfew was instituted.57 In Aden the same year, when Antonin Besse made a large donation to Oxford Univers…

Oblique accounts offered in the archives show that workers were deeply aware of the strategies of racialisation and hierarchies of labour meant to keep them in place. In Aden, during an Aden Port Trust dockers’ strike, the workers demanded paid transport to Britain once every five years. While the …

What distinguishes many strikes at docks on the Arabian Peninsula is not only the depth of worker grievances about workplace conditions (as in the story that opens this chapter), but also the weaving of these workplace protests into political demands. Whether mobilising against colonial masters or …

Undoubtedly, the casualised and subcontracting nature of the labour regime was the primary factor in the low productivity.9 A 1953 report from the docks of Kuwait clearly recognised that a better-managed port could not depend entirely on subcontracted labour. The report added that ‘with the growth …

In 1985, Jabal Ali Free Zone hosted sixteen companies. After it lifted foreign ownership restrictions, out of 720 companies in 1995, only 25 per cent were Emirati.103 By 2019, it boasted of accommodating more than 7,000 firms. Foreign businesses, polled about why they preferred operating in the zon…