The historiography of the Gulf has long been dominated by narratives originating in the British colonial archive, where the thoughts and perceptions of late nineteenth-century British colonial officers can still be traced in much writing in English on the Gulf today. In Bahrain’s case, not only was the same ethno-sectarian language found in the colonial archive in such writing, but also the mode of thought, political coding, and interpretations of society have remained consistently within the colonial framework. In Contested Modernity, Omar al-Shehabi interrogates what he calls “the ethno-sectarian colonial gaze” used to navigate Bahrain’s modern history in much of the Anglophone scholarship on the country and the region. He achieves this by challenging and dismantling the idea that ethno-sectarian political mobilization is a product of Bahrain’s native social relations.In his introductory chapter, titled “Approaching Absolutism, Nationalism, and Sectarianism in the Gulf,” al-Shehabi argues that ethno-sectarian mobilization is a modern product of the political contestations that took place during the early twentieth century under the umbrella of British colonialism (7), culminating in the events of 1923 where the colonial authorities intervened most glaringly, and directly, in Bahraini politics by playing a decisive role in replacing the local ruler (10). By highlighting the vital part played by the first group of local modernist reformers in shaping the political terrain in Bahrain, al-Shehabi demonstrates how the writings, discourses, and movements of this group provided a non-sectarian discourse—“a discourse of anti-colonialism and ecumenical Islamic reform” (130) influenced by the broader al-Nahda cultural renaissance movement across the Arab world—which has been significantly under-documented and often overlooked in Anglophone scholarship (4–11).In chapter 1, titled “The Ethnosectarian Gaze and Divided Rule,” al-Shehabi, in tracing colonial readings of Bahraini society in the British archive, observes that the complexity of the actors involved was reduced to a fraught relationship between sects and ethnicities, ranging from confessional demarcations such as “Shi‘as” and “Sunnis,” to ethnic and cultural ones such as “Najdis” (those actors of tribal background who were perceived to come from the Najd plateau in the Arabian Peninsula), “Huwala” (the Arabic-speaking populations who inhabit the two banks of the Gulf), “Hasawis” (populations who moved from al-Hasa on the eastern shores of today’s Saudi Arabia), in addition to “Persians” and “foreigners.” Significantly for al-Shehabi’s account, such groupings intersected ethnic and sect identifications in such a way that the objects of the gaze through which they are articulated may be properly called “ethno-sects.” For example, the ethnicities of both the “Huwalas” and “Baharnas” were classified as Sunni, and thus were considered “by the British to be subjects of the local ruler,” while “Hasawis,” “Qatifis,” though ostensibly as much Arabs as the Najdis, were treated as Shi‘a extensions, and considered, as such, as “foreigners” and “subjects” of the British.The British used these ethno-sectarian variables as the primary lens through which to guide their politics in the islands (13–17). This view minimized the complexity of Bahraini society to a set of simple binaries, when in reality these binaries were not so clear-cut (17–25). For aside from the existence of “several madhhabs, or schools of jurisprudence, which [complicate] the rigid picture of only two distinct sect groupings” (15), Bahrain and the geopolitical context to which it belonged contained several social and political tendencies that, though they continue to prove to be highly influential, could not be fitted into the analytical framework of the discourses produced by the colonial archive (6–7).Furthermore, while the social groups populating the region share a common religion and language, British colonial officers, such as J. G. Lorimer (1870–1914), “treated each of the above social identities as different and clearly defined ethnic communities or ‘classes’ that made up the ‘local’ population” (17). Such categorization was a direct result of the colonial ethno-sectarian gaze. The gaze was a systematic approach to break up and categorize local society using various tools ranging from censuses to establishing institutions and laws (14–17). Different apparatuses of power were organized mainly around these ethno-sectarian fault-lines, which became the most salient factors in political mobilization, for both the British and the many significant local actors that formed the early twentieth-century history of Bahrain, while other factors were left out of the account (18–19).The ethno-sectarian categorization of Bahraini society was complemented by demarcating a small group of “foreigners,” who later became subjects of British rule in Bahrain, which had legal, political, and social consequences, such as divided rule and contestation of sovereignty, in addition to the fact that many of these “foreigners” self-identified as “locals” (17–25). Contesting the term “indirect rule,” al-Shehabi borrows an adapted form of the concept of “divided rule” from Mary Lewis to describe the mechanism used by the British authorities to secure their interests in Bahrain and the wider region (9), dedicating chapter 4, titled “Contesting Divided Rule, 1900–1920,” to explain in detail the establishment of this new system and its consequences (131–166).This term, “divided rule,” sheds better light on how the British colonial system in Bahrain institutionalized dual centers of authority and jurisdiction, thus sharing “co-sovereignty” with the local ruler (32–33). Al-Shehabi then expands the term to “divided and contested rule” to emphasize that “even the definitions of the jurisdictions of sovereignty were extremely contested in Bahrain” (33). This contestation would attain a new height of contradiction arising from the fragmentation of and contest over sovereign power in the new system from 1900 to 1923 when the British removed and appointed several local rulers (173–198).Al-Shehabi recounts the political history preceding this period in chapter 2, titled “Politics and Society Before Divided Rule, 1783–1900,” illustrating how political, social, and economic undertakings were conducted before the arrival of the British and the establishment of the divided and contested rule system (35–89). This paves the way for al-Shehabi’s primary argument, which shows how the political context of the period is not to be understood based on ethno-sectarian considerations. The author arrives at this conclusion by pointing out the absence of a historical correspondence between the sectarian schematization of the British and the actually existing reform programs that shaped political discourse and practice in Bahrain, as well as the wide variety of intellectual commitments, cultural standpoints, and political projects that did not conform to the presuppositions of the ethno-sectarian gaze and thus remained neglected or, at best, downplayed in the colonial archive (65–89).Contrary to how the British imagined and later materialized their ethno-sectarian gaze, political power in this period was primarily a result of the regional political practices of contested alliances, while internally “it was localized, highly personalised, and diffused” (35). These political practices complicated any appeal to ethno-sectarian identifications as the primary factor driving mass agitation and mobilization at the time. The chapter then highlights how local political power took personalized and decentralized forms based on the administration of the port cities of Muharraq and Manama (86–89). Moreover, power was structured across urban–rural divides that shaped the economic organization and “was susceptible to a high degree of variance in form” (35).More importantly still, the final decades of the nineteenth century, leading up to the events taking place in Bahrain in 1923, was the period that witnessed the emergence of al-Nahda in the Arab world, a movement of the intelligentsia that sought to reform Arabic thought and literature (91). Chapter 3, titled “Al-Nahda in Bahrain, 1875–1920,” highlights the critical role this period had on the first group of local modernist reformers (91–130) who sowed the first seeds of “Nationalism, Arabism, liberalism and Islamism” in Bahrain and the broader Gulf region (110–128). Notwithstanding the influential role that al-Nahda group members had on the politics of the island throughout the twentieth century, “not a single study written in English” addressed this generation in Bahrain, or the existing literature on the Gulf and al-Nahda more widely—despite their crucial historical role and lasting legacies (4), their part was “reduced to labellings based on sects and ethnicities” (3–4).In understanding these newly emerging thoughts and movements, al-Shehabi draws on Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of the invention of “tradition” by the state through focusing on traditions “as the produced and lived experiences and collective memories and discourses of political movement” (4–5). Thus, al-Shehabi highlights the subject’s “discourses,” “myths,” and “spaces” in addition to “actions” that resulted in their development and “constituted their body of traditions that were produced, transmitted, modified, and carried across people, time, and space” (4). Moreover, al-Shehabi illustrates the significant role this group played against British colonialism in Bahrain in the early twentieth century, when the direct involvement of the British in local affairs was drastically heightened (107–110). In 1919, anti-colonial sentiments were on the rise across the Arab world. In Bahrain, resistance to British colonialism materialized in an institutional form within local al-Nahda circles with the establishment of the Committee to Resist British Colonialism (CRBC) (107).Chapter 5, “‘Fitnah’: Ethnosectarianism Meets al-Nahda, 1921–1923,” elucidates how the British increased their involvement on the islands in the mid-1920s, as their efforts to assume greater sovereignty in Bahrain faced contestations as a result of contradictions arising from establishing the divided and contested rule system (33). These contradictions intensified with the rise of regional tensions, where local mobilization coupled with the ruler’s resistance to the British increasingly spun out of control. The British had to take charge in May 1923 by deposing ruler Shaikh Isa al-Khalifah and installing in his place his son, Shaikh Hamad al-Khalifah, who was expected to be more responsive to British demands (185–187). Eventually, this led to “petitions and counter-petitions for and against the reforms,” primarily based on ethno-sectarian considerations. However, one petition ran contrary to the prevalent discourse and demands: a letter penned by a group called the “Bahrain National Congress,” which featured local modernist figures closely aligned to al-Nahda’s discourse and ideals (187). The discourse, embodied in this document, marked a turning point in the history of Bahraini politics (188).In summary, the letter’s demands revolved around establishing a new system of rule that is localized, democratized, and “based on ‘equality’” through setting up a representative council chosen by “the people,” as well as calling on the British political agent to uphold Britain’s agreements with Bahrain and cease from interfering in internal affairs (188). The distinctly anti-colonialist and nationalist tenor adopted in the document can hardly be overstated. Shedding light on the intricacies of the thoughts and actions of the al-Nahda group, as expressed in events and documents such as the above, al-Shehabi points out that none of these complexities “mattered from the colonial ethno-sectarian viewpoint” (198). According to al-Shehabi, different social actors were: robbed of their agency, and what was revealed instead as primarily important in categorizing each individual was his/her designated sect and ethnicity, which ultimately defined and articulated his/her position and worth as a social agent from the British colonial point of view. (198)Lastly, in a postscript entitled “The Rise of Absolutism and Nationalism,” al-Shehabi presents a reading of the beginning of not only ethno-sectarianism and colonialism but also the modernized absolutist rule that took root under the guidance of British imperialism, where the ethno-sectarian gaze and the system of divided and contested rule jointly paved the way for the dissolution of the old decentralized order and the concentration of sovereign power in the hands of the new ruler and the British political agent (199–200). While the instability due to “contested sovereignty” was resolved by sharing sovereignty between the local ruler and the British, “divided rule” continued under the new system (212). From the British perspective, Bahrain then became an example of modernized absolutism for its neighbors in the Gulf (205). Influenced by the British colonial archive, ethno-sectarian readings continued to prevail and play a dominant role in guiding the local government’s strategy at times of internal upheaval and crises. Such sectarian discourses and practices were instrumental in fragmenting several social and political movements in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, and, most recently, during the 2011 political uprising (217).Contested Modernity paves the way to a new reading of Bahraini history beyond the prevalent ethno-sectarian colonial narratives, marking an essential contribution to studying modern histories of the state in Arab Gulf societies more generally. The book also provides critical tools and strategies for navigating through the British colonial archive, which opens the gate to further critical readings and rewritings of the historiography of the Gulf. The book is one of the most important works on the modern history of the Gulf, not only because it focuses on an important part of that history, which has otherwise been neglected or marginalized, but also because Omar al-Shehabi succeeds in providing a critical rereading of the British legacy and its colonial afterlives in the region.