Personal Column; A History of Bahrain(1926 - 1957)
تاريخ النشر: 01/01/1996
الناشر: مكتبة لبنان ناشرون
نبذة الناشر:Personal column tells the story of thirty years of Bahrain’s history from 1926, almost half a century ago, when my father, Sir Charles Belgrave as he was later to become, first arrived in these islands, to 1957, the year he retired. These thirty-one years saw the rule of Shaikh Hamed ...and of Shaikh Sulman, the decline of the pearl industry, the discovery of oil, the Second World War and the growing political awareness that came to Bahrain in the 1950’s as the inevitable result of the educational, social and economic progress that had occurred in the Islands.
Many of principal characters that figure in PERSONAL COLUMN are no longer alive. Sheikh Sulman was succeeded by his son Shaikh Isa, the present Amir, in 1961, the leaders of the political movement in the 1950’s are dead or in retirement, the British diplomats who figured in the history of Bahrain have largely left the service, and my father died in 1970.
For this reason PERSONAL COLUMN, although written as an autobiography is today history, a commentary and a description of the events in Bahrain during three decades as views and comments are inevitably controversial – they may be agreed with or argued about by today’s readers – but they represent an eyewitness report on the Bahrain of today. For this reason I was delighted when the Librairie du Liban expressed a wish to republish PERSONAL COLUMN.
In conclusion, I would like to reproduce a comment made by Sir Charles Belgrave which appeared in his introduction to the Bahrain Government report of December 1937, one that as true of Bahrain today as it was then.
"In other Gulf States, Bahrain is considered very progressive, the wish to be progressive comes from the people themselves, it is not forced upon them by the Government". إقرأ المزيد