The book begins with the history of ancient port cities along the Persian Gulf coast, where diverse faiths and cultures from around the world interacted and thrived. The Center of the World takes us on a historical journey, placing the Gulf at the core of globalized trade and cross-cultural encounters; further examining how these historical foundations have defined and shaped the modern-day Gulf. Allen James Fromherz’s book presents the overall argument that the Gulf has undergone various stages of globalization throughout history. This has reshaped the geopolitics of the Gulf and its position in world history, highlighting how the region is intricately linked to global developments rather than being isolated. The history of rapid transformation, shifting trade centres, and dependence on volatile global markets has resulted in the establishment of a key hub for global maritime activity. Moreover, cross-cultural interactions over the long history of globalization have shaped a strong and distinctive Gulf identity—its ‘cosmopolitan’ nature, tradition of tolerance, and inclusion of diverse regions, religions, and unique societies.
Fromherz has organized a time-travel capsule encapsulating a millennium of history, methodically shaping each distinct era through comprehensive examinations of global trade, thereby establishing a ‘center’. Each epoch has been anchored to a specific city, ranging from the pre-Islamic period to the contemporary era. Thus, these specificities are reflected in the chapterization: Dilmun (632-1000) in the pre-Islamic era; Basra (632-1000); Siraf (1000-1500); Hormuz (1500-1793); Muscat (1793-1945); and Dubai (1945-present). These chapters reflect long-distance trade, the circulation of texts and language, economic boom and bust, and political retreat and flourish rather than detailed urban histories. Fromherz has synthesized a narrative derived from urban histories to an extent that it identifies and traces long-standing trade routes within the region. Such cultural mixing creates opportunities for global trade and exchange, as well as in the region that was at the crossroads of Arab, Greek and Persian peoples (p. 56).
The chapter on Dilmun, now in Bahrain, is about the trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The region’s prosperity is based on trade and geopolitics, and has developed irrigated agriculture. The second chapter emphasizes Basra’s golden age between the 9th and 10th centuries. Basra, for the Abbasid empire, was a centre of religious and social tolerance and the hub of maritime trade and caravans from Eurasia, the Mediterranean and the Levant. The following chapter explores the Gulf’s history through the historical portrait of Siraf on the Persian coast, which served as a centre for merchants from India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia in the 10th and 11th centuries, becoming a trans-shipment centre for the Abbasids and the Persian trade before it was destroyed by an earthquake, shifting the centre to modern-day Hormuz. The fourth chapter explores the modern-day Strait of Hormuz and the colonial emergence of the Portuguese trading empire in the western Indian Ocean since the early 16th century, focusing on negotiating a trading partnership with the Persians, Hindu Banians, East Africans, and Portuguese.
The chapter on Muscat examines the history of the Gulf from the late 18th century to the early 20th century, focusing on the shift of the Gulf’s centre. Thus, the rise and prosperity of the current-day Oman were influenced by the historical Persian Gulf and the East African coast. The Gulf in the 18th century, under the Qasimis of Ras-al-Khayam, emphasized the need to revise Western political and military domination in West and South Asia. The British rule, referred to by a historian as a Pax Britannica, benefitted from its establishment in India and the Gulf. The chapter on Dubai addresses the end of British colonial rule, the shaping of the oil economy, and the emergence of modern states. It provides an analytical overview of modern-day Gulf societies, the creation of their welfare states based on redistributive economies, and their monarchical political systems. The purpose was to provide free health care and to diversify the overly oil-dependent economy. The book concludes with a discussion of the current geopolitical situation, the Gulf War, the Arab uprising, the tussle for regional dominance, the establishment of an increasingly robust US military presence in the Gulf, and ongoing calculations with Iran. The author has rightly pointed out that any US miscalculation against Iran will destabilize the entire Gulf.
The current US-Iran war of 2026, and the diplomacy over the authority of the Strait of Hormuz, impacting the global oil and trade economy, prove Allen’s argument that the Persian Gulf has never been a peripheral space. Instead, it is the centre of maritime trade, cross-cultural connection, quest for regional hegemony, and global exchange even in contemporary times. The region has experienced the Gaza genocide, regional geopolitics, the Red Sea route, and the Strait of Hormuz, which shape world politics; whoever influences the ports, the chokepoints, oil routes, and trade corridors, shapes and designs the global economy. Thus, the persistence of the Palestinian question and the militarization of regional politics reflect the intertwining of economic factors with questions of justice, sovereignty, and political legitimacy, particularly in the Gulf. Fromherz’s narrative provides an intersectional argument where the region is trapped in the ancient conflict and is a historical central space where global trade, empire, resistance, and regional agency continue to intersect.
Even though the book offers a teleological view of the history of the Gulf, with overarching generalizations, shortcuts and predictions in the last chapter, it is an interesting read for academics, scholars, and experts in the region’s history and politics. The book provides a history of connectivity and evidence of ethnolinguistic, religious, and migratory diversity that has shaped ‘The Gulf Region’ in contemporary times. To understand the region, the book’s lucid language, coherent arguments, a well-designed map for reference, and readable prose with illustrative images from Fromherz’s fieldwork can be introduced in introductory courses on Gulf Studies.
Nevertheless, the perspective remains defined to each specific city Fromherz explores in his book. What if the cities in the 1800s, such as Manama or Qatif, had offered an alternative perspective? Do the questions shift to sectarian differences, with Islamic reformism becoming more prominent, thereby shifting the centre’s narrative? Moreover, if the book had been examined through a colonial lens, what perspective would it have focused on: the different images of the British Empire, or anti-colonial mobilization in oil fields and beyond?
Moreover, the reason for highlighting each historical moment at the ‘centre’ of the book is unclear. And lastly, why does the idea of ‘the world’ and ‘the global’ remain the theatre of action throughout the book, rather than a product of human geography? Fromherz’s core argument focuses on trade, consensus, and cross-cultural interaction to explore a vein of Gulf history. A more detailed and problematized understanding of the status and treatment of the migrant workers in the Gulf states would have facilitated understanding the ‘center of the world’. Moreover, in what context is the Gulf the ‘centring’ of the world, and what region, universalistic empire, trading network, capitalist economy, or international system of nation-states are we centring?
Azeemah Saleem is an independent scholar of Migration, Gender and Global Studies. She is also a Visiting Fellow, Centre for Studies of Plural Societies, New Delhi.