ABSTRACT
Kuwayt came under political siege by way of substantial oil revenues and the large foreign population that it attracted. In 1945 it was a traditional tribal principality under British protection, and its domestic politics were the exclusive preserve of the shaykhly clan. Kuwayt is an oddity, not in the Middle East alone, but in the world at large. Less than 6,000 square miles of unrelieved desert to which may be added more of the same waste in the undivided half of the 2,000-square-mile Kuwayti-Saudi Neutral Zone, the Sunni amirate floats on the largest known pool of oil. Kuwayt ranked in the 1960s among the half-dozen largest oil-producing, oil-exporting countries. Kuwayt was essentially little more than a city-state, since every second resident lived in Kuwayt City, the capital. Kuwayt was declared a hereditary amirate of the descendant of Mubarak al-Sabah Al Sabah, and the amir was empowered to designate his successor.
