Examining historical connections, comparison, and contrasts between the Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean, The Global Gulf Workshop focuses on how this dynamic region impacted World History.

Rather than studying the Gulf in isolation, this workshop brings together scholars of the Gulf with scholars of two, other highly global seas that have seen much theoretical and historiographic attention in recent years: the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

This workshop is groundbreaking, as it provides a truly rare opportunity in academe. While studies of oceans and seas such as the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean are inherently interdisciplinary — bringing together scholars of geography, history, literature, linguistics, and religion — to think about the sea and the shore in both its whole and its many parts, rarely do scholars dedicated to one particular sea have an opportunity to compare their work with others. Also, rarely has there been an opportunity to forge a new historiography and theoretical framework for a relatively understudied body of water — the Gulf.

This workshop is the first time scholars of these global seas (Mediterranean, Gulf, and Indian Ocean) have been brought together in one place to think anew about their own approaches to themes of connectivity, cosmopolitanism, and commerce.

The first theme of the conference is focused on connections. Invited scholars present and discuss examples of specific, material connections between the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the Indian Ocean as a World-System. Provoking scholarly discussion of how the Mediterranean, the Gulf, and the Indian Ocean were connected over times, this theme helps set the stage for comparing and contrasting the Mediterranean, Gulf, and the Indian Ocean.

The second theme, comparative diversities, brings together scholars of religious, linguistic, and cultural diversities, minority-majority relationships, and contacts in the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf, to discuss ways of thinking about these relationships in broad or comparative ways. Scholars of Muslim minorities in Christian Europe, for instance, will be asked to compare and discuss their research with scholars of Christian minorities in the Gulf or in the Indian Ocean system. Similar presentations and discussions will be facilitated between scholars of linguistic and cultural diversities.

The final theme, on cross-cultural trade, will similarly provoke discussions of how commerce and the impacts of that commerce in the political and cultural histories of the Gulf both mirror and differ from the Mediterranean and the Indian ocean in specific ways.

From F. Braudel to K. N. Chaudhuri, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean have been the focus of extensive inquiry, inquiry that has harnessed a wide range of disciplines and scholars. The Gulf, while gaining some recent attention, has yet to see nearly the same amount of attention, despite being, in many ways, at the geographical heart and chronological origins of world history,  “the missing link” between both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean world. Since Pre-Islamic times, the Gulf influenced not only inhabitants settled in places such as Beth Katreya (Pre-Islamic Qatar), Abu Dhabi, Bushehr, and Bandar-e-Abbas (Bandar in Persian means any protective cove or harbor), Manama (Bahrain), Muscat (Oman), and Dubai on the shore but also was essential to port cities such as al-Ubulla and Basra, and even the hinterlands beyond the coasts. Indeed, contact was regularly maintained between what geographers term “hinterland and foreland.” Bedouin of oases such as al-Ain, Buraimi, and Liwa were many miles from the sea but still connected to the water through commerce, lineage, and an annual transhumance of women from the humid coasts to inland oases, while men were at sea. Gulf networks reached not only along the Arabian Sea but also through the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to the heart of the Middle East. As numerous discoveries of ancient Chinese ceramics exemplify, the Gulf has been a transit zone for trade and cultural exchange across the Indian Ocean to India, South East Asia, and beyond for millennia. Just as the Mediterranean was a so-called “Corrupting Sea,” a body of water that had a tremendous impact on Western and North African history far beyond the littoral, the Gulf was similarly influential to the history of the Middle East and Asia as a whole. Although it is a shallow sea with a narrow and vulnerable mouth at the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf was a source of fear and opportunity, a bold projection into the heart of Mesopotamia. Far from being an entirely new phenomenon, the “modern” Gulf, constructed on trade, commerce, and traditions of consensus, is only one of many historical manifestations of a dynamic, blended, and changing region.

By connecting, comparing, and contrasting the Gulf with the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, this workshop develops innovative methods and approaches to the Gulf as a region of diverse cultures, histories, and identities.

Beyond Oil and Chronology — The Gulf in Depth

This workshop is a needed contribution to scholarship on the humanities and histories of the Gulf. It promises to have a significant impact on a burgeoning field. Despite its economic, historical and cultural importance, the Gulf remains under-represented in scholarship. While there is surprisingly little economic study of the area’s past, there is even less study of the history and cultural traditions of the region. Even as the recent nature of current scholarly interest poses some challenges, it is also a new opportunity: there are many potential openings for new studies of the Gulf that will be of great interest to Gulf Institute participants. Sources of information for entire emirates, cultures, and local regions remain neglected by scholarship, awaiting more serious study. Some secondary work does exist that only briefly acknowledges the variety of cultures and societies that profound economic change has recently impacted. Too often the Gulf has been viewed as a region virtually “without history,” a region defined almost exclusively by an enormous injection of capital over the past few decades.

While acknowledging the economic and social importance of oil, this institute will focus particularly on new scholarship on the region, scholarship that takes a humanistic approach that looks beyond simply studying “black gold” as the sole explanation for the shape of change in the Gulf. This new approach does not deny the impact of oil. Rather, it sees current economic changes in the Gulf in their social, political, and cultural contexts. Many of the standard histories of the Gulf read as if changes of any importance began with the discovery of oil, ignoring the rich cultural and historical background of the profound economic changes that the Gulf is experiencing.

Far from only following the oil pipeline, this institute will provide a setting for understanding and engaging the cultures, histories, and traditions existing just underneath, or even within, the appearance of hypermodernity and soaring skyscrapers. In this way, the institute endeavors to examine the Gulf in the longue durée, both beneath and beyond standard histories and common media projections.