A History of Modern Oman

Abstract

A HISTORY OF MODERN OMAN Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 (301 pages + maps, index) $94.99 (cloth)Jeremy Jones and Nicholas Ridout's book on modern Oman will be a reference for the history of Oman from the late eighteenth century to the present day. There are already a few histories of Oman, such as Patricia Risso's Oman and Muscat (Croom Helm, 1986) or Uzi Rabi's Emergence of States in a Tribal Society (Sussex University Press, 2006). Marc Valeri's book, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (Oxford University Press, 2014) covers nation building and political legitimacy in the sultanate since 1970. A History of Modern Oman, however, writes a global history of the sultanate, placing its expansion as a thalassocracy and its emergence as a nation-state within a larger frame of the sultans' encounters and entanglements with colonial powers.The book's main argument is that unlike its neighbors the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Oman has been able to undertake major changes to become part of the globalized world while keeping some of its nineteenth-century traditions. The sultans have supposedly invented an original mode of development that preserves Oman's political, social, and religious traditions. Hence Oman exemplifies the model of a state enjoying oil-reserve prosperity while preserving Ibadism, one of Islam's main branches, said to have been founded as early as the seventh century CE, and a centuryold cosmopolitan society. It is a classic argument, tackled here in two parts, covering first the long nineteenth century and then the twentieth century. The argument, however, is questionable. Oman's neighbors, like the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, have followed a similar political and social pattern as the one Jones and Ridout describe (see, for example, Christopher Davidson's Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond [Columbia University Press, 2009]). Nevertheless, the authors provide valuable details about Oman's political, social, and cultural modernity since the nineteenth century. Chapter two, for example, describes the development of a press and a dynamic intellectual sphere in Zanzibar and Oman, situating it within the larger frame of the global nahda movement. Chapters six and seven stand as a good resume of the modernizing reforms and measures Sultan Qaboos carried out in the 1970s, facilitated by the wealth coming from oil revenues and the help of British advisers, who served at economic consultants. The authors give a well-documented portrait of Omani society in the twentieth century as they tackle the social consequences of the oil boom as well as labor migration.The book's second central argument is that "key Sultans" made Oman a modern and federated nation-state that became an influential partner to the regional powers. The relevance of the "nation-state" in the context of Oman is questionable, and the book does not analyze the evidence of a "national sentiment." The concept is arguably Eurocentric and does not do justice to Oman's long political tradition, deeply influenced by Ibadism. These qualifications do not, however, detract from the book's powerful narration of how the sultans from the late eighteenth century onward created a federated state in Oman, despite internal tensions and tribal conflicts. For Jones and Ridout, Sa'id bin Sultan (r. 1806-56), Sa'id III bin Taymur (r. 1932-70), and Sultan Qaboos, who is currently in power, led what could be called a policy of national union and reconciliation. The book also demonstrates how Sultan Qaboos, in the context of the oil boom, transformed the figure of the sultan: in addition to being the ultimate source of authority he also became a provider of services and the guardian of the unified nation-state.A History of Oman takes the shura as a key concept through which to understand Oman's political system. The shura, as the authors define it, is "the practice whereby the ruler, leader or sheikh consults with others before taking decisions of importance to the society, tribe or family which he leads" (198). …