History · Kuwait

Kuwait: The Pearling Town That Struck Oil

A trading port at the head of the Gulf, ruled by the Al Sabah since 1752 — a British protectorate, a sudden oil-fuelled fortune, the Iraqi invasion of 1990, and the Gulf's most powerful parliament

By Worldlore Editorial · 19 September 2026

A waterfront skyline of glass towers and the pointed Kuwait Towers along a blue Gulf coast
Kuwait City. Within a generation of oil exports beginning in 1946, a poor pearling town became one of the wealthiest societies on Earth per head. (Francisco Anzola / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0)

A small, rich, argumentative state

Kuwait sits at the head of the Persian Gulf, wedged between Iraq and Saudi Arabia — a flat, hot country of about 4.9 million people, of whom only around 1.5 million are citizens. It has been ruled by the Al Sabah family since the 18th century, and it is very rich, on oil. It is also unusual in the Gulf for having a genuinely powerful elected parliament, whose long struggle with the ruling family has shaped its modern politics.

A short history

  1. c. 1752

    The Al Sabah

    Bani Utub settlers choose Sabah I as ruler of Kuwait.

  2. 18th–19th centuries

    The trading port

    Pearl diving, dhow-building, and Gulf trade.

  3. 1899

    British protection

    Sheikh Mubarak signs a treaty with Britain.

  4. 1922

    The borders

    The Uqair Protocol fixes Kuwait's frontiers with Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

  5. 1938

    The Burgan field

    One of the world's largest oil discoveries.

  6. 1961

    Independence

    Britain ends the protectorate; Iraq claims Kuwait.

  7. 1962–1963

    Constitution and parliament

    An elected National Assembly is created.

  8. 1990–1991

    The Iraqi invasion

    A seven-month occupation ends in the Gulf War.

  9. 2024

    Assembly suspended

    The emir shelves parliament and part of the constitution.

The trading town

Kuwait — "little fort" — was founded on the bay in the early 18th century, when clans of the Bani Utub migrated from central Arabia and, around 1752, chose Sabah I as their ruler. It grew into a trading port and a centre of pearl diving and dhow-building; Kuwaiti ships traded across the Gulf and Indian Ocean to India and East Africa, and a merchant elite shared influence with the ruling family.

To keep off Ottoman claims and Gulf rivals, Sheikh Mubarak "the Great" signed a protection treaty with Britain in 1899 — Britain handling Kuwait's foreign affairs in exchange for a subsidy and defence. In 1922 a British-drawn protocol fixed Kuwait's borders, cutting off much of its claimed hinterland; Iraq never fully accepted the line.

A very large wooden dhow with two masts and a carved stern, raised on supports behind a low stone sea wall at the water's edge
Al-Hashemi-II in Kuwait, a giant wooden dhow. Dhow-building and pearling were the town's living until the Japanese cultured-pearl industry destroyed the Gulf pearl trade in the 1930s, just before oil replaced it. (Mosbatho / Wikimedia Commons)

Oil and independence

Oil was discovered at the vast Burgan field in 1938, and exports began after the Second World War. The transformation was rapid and total: within a generation Kuwait went from a poor pearling town to a comprehensive welfare state — free health care and education, guaranteed public jobs, no income tax — rebuilt from the ground up, and drawing in hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.

Britain ended the protectorate on 19 June 1961. Iraq immediately claimed Kuwait as part of Basra province; British and then Arab League troops deployed, and the crisis passed. Kuwait adopted a constitution in 1962 and elected its first National Assembly in 1963 — a real, if limited, legislature. It has been suspended by the emir several times and always restored; women gained the vote in 2005.

The invasion

On 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait, citing the old border dispute, an oil-pricing quarrel, and unpaid Iraqi war debts. The seven-month occupation brought looting, torture and executions; around a thousand Kuwaitis were killed and hundreds more disappeared, while the government ruled from Saudi Arabia.

A US Navy F-14 fighter flying over black smoke from a burning Kuwaiti oil well, 1991
Retreating Iraqi forces set fire to some 700 Kuwaiti oil wells in 1991. The last was capped in November; the smoke and oil lakes were an environmental disaster. (U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons)

A US-led coalition of some 35 nations, authorised by the UN, launched Operation Desert Storm in January 1991 and liberated Kuwait in about six weeks. Afterwards, Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians, whose leadership had backed Iraq.

Kuwait now

Kuwait rebuilt quickly on oil money, and its sovereign wealth fund is among the world's oldest and largest. But politics has been gridlocked for decades: the elected Assembly and the Al Sabah-appointed cabinet clash repeatedly, producing frequent government collapses and dissolutions, and Kuwait has lagged behind the UAE and Qatar in diversifying and building.

The tiered blue seats and speaker's rostrum of Kuwait's National Assembly chamber
Kuwait's National Assembly, the Gulf's strongest elected parliament. In 2024 the emir suspended it and parts of the constitution for up to four years, citing political deadlock. (U.S. Department of State / Wikimedia Commons)

Kuwait remains a rich rentier state, dependent on oil for about 90 per cent of revenue and on foreign labour for most of its workforce, with a large stateless "Bidoon" population denied citizenship.

What Kuwait carries

Kuwait's wealth arrived suddenly and from underground, turning a merchant town into a welfare state almost overnight. Two things have defined the country since: the memory of 1990, when a neighbour tried to erase it from the map, and the unresolved tug-of-war between a ruling family and an elected assembly that neither can quite win — a contest that gave Kuwait the most open politics in the Gulf, and, in 2024, a sharp step back from it.

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