E534 | How did massive, modern shipping ports emerge from the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, and what they teach us about our present forms of global exchange? Combining historical research with site visits that included multiple voyages around the Arabian Peninsula, our guest Laleh Khalili sheds light on these questions in this two-part series on shipping and empire around the Arabian Peninsula. Through her investigation of the entangled realms of commerce, technology, and empire in the Indian Ocean world, Khalili shows how changes in any of one of them sparked associated changes in the others. In this second part, we focus on the period from the mid-20th century period when new centers of trade like Dubai vied to attract commerce and investment to their shores. As vessel size grew, so too did ports, whose construction and maintainence have remade coastal ecologies in the Gulf. We discuss the the impacts of armed conflict and the COVID-19 pandemic on shipping, as well as the recent shifts in global logistics that have arisen with the rise of large Middle East-based ports management firms.

More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2022/12/khalili2.html

Laleh Khalili is Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge 2007), Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford 2013), and Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso 2020).

Matthew Ghazarian is an Eveillard Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Environmental Science and Policy at Smith College. His research examines the intersections of social, economic, and environmental history in the late Ottoman Empire.

CREDITS

Episode No. 534
Release Date: 3 December 2022
Sound production by Matthew Ghazarian
Music: "Um Pepino" by Blue Dot Sessions
Images and bibliography courtesy of Laleh Khalili at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2022/12/khalili2.html

Shipping and Empire around the Arabian Peninsula, Part 2

Ottoman History Podcast