ABSTRACT
Oil gave a new aspect to Kuwait, and to the entire Arabian peninsula. For hundreds of years Kuwait looked into the desert, to the Najd and beyond to Mecca, for spiritual inspiration; and seaward, across the Gulf, for its trade and contact with the outside world. Then, suddenly, it embraced an alien technology. It took on its new dimension with compulsive enthusiasm, using its enormous wealth with a liberality that few nations had shown before and few are likely to show in the future; gathering technical skills and administrative capability as fast as its growing prosperity and limited manpower resources would allow. Kuwait was destined to play an important part in that appreciation and in affairs which would soon enmesh much of the Arabian peninsula, the USA, Britain and Europe, and many of the greatest commercial enterprises in the Western world, in a relationship that to say the least of it was delicately poised.
