Gulf Pragmatism at a Crossroads: Al-Sabah Political Conduct and Kuwait Town's Foreign Policy toward Four Powers during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

This manuscript investigates pragmatism as an analytical lens for understanding the foreign policy of Kuwait Town during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with particular attention to the political conduct of the ruling sheikhs of the al-Sabah family. It asks whether pragmatism operated as a stable orientation in Kuwaiti foreign relations; whether Kuwait may be treated as a representative case of Gulf regional pragmatism; and whether a non-material Sabahi political legacy informed decision-making in external affairs. It further examines whether this governance pattern remained consistent throughout the two centuries or periodically came into direct conflict with doctrinal duties, customary obligations, or commitments to communal consultation; and whether it generated demonstrable political, economic, and security benefits. The argument advanced here is that Sabahi foreign policy was marked by a durable pragmatic logic grounded in adaptive flexibility, interest-based calculation, and selective engagement with four competing regional powers, while generally avoiding rigid ideological commitments. Methodologically, the analysis adopts a critical-comparative and microhistorical framework, using Kuwait as a spatial-political case. It draws on a wide range of primary and secondary historical materials; including VOC, EIC, and British Raj records, Western travel accounts, Kuwaiti and Arabian sources. A multidisciplinary approach is also employed; it brings historical analysis into dialogue with political psychology to interpret a specific Sabahi-British incident and anchors this analysis in pragmatism as a philosophical tradition; and as established in the introduction, the latter differentiates from political realism in some points. The findings indicate that pragmatism constituted a recurring feature of Kuwait Town's foreign policy across the two centuries; enabling the Sabahis to reinforce relative autonomy, preserve security, protect commercial interests, and manage shifting relations with the Banū Khālid, the Wahhabis, the Ottomans, and the imperial British power.