Arabia The Gulf & The West

by John Barrett Kelly

New. A Critical View of the Arabs and Their Oil Policy. J.B. Kelly. 530 pages.

Genres: Middle East, History

530 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

The son of a chemist, John Barrett Kelly initially attended University College, Auckland as a geology student before switching to history and literature. After teaching in schools in New Zealand, Queensland, England and Egypt, he took an MA and a Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. Kelly was a research fellow at the Institute of Colonial Studies at Oxford University from 1955 until 1958, and he served as an adviser to the Foreign Office on boundary disputes in the Arabian peninsula.

After leaving Oxford, Kelly taught at Wesleyan College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Wisconsin. In the 1980s he was a research fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and he served as an adviser to the government of Oman in their border disputes with Saudi Arabia.

Reviews

[Thomas Funke]

A classic to understand the machinations of the Arabian Peninsula & Gulf.

Americans would be wise to read this & by doing so, you'll come to understand the current situation with the Houthi's & Red Sea. No one is going to change their 5,000 year old traditions & mindset, now bastardized by Marxism.

I'll let you read this book to see who is most recently to blame for pissing them off.

[Brian]

JB Kelly provides an excellent overview of Middle East relations with the United States during the 1960's and 1970's. Although written before the fall of the Shah it still is a valuable contribution to the scholarship of the Middle East. It is one of the few books that really provides a close look at how the Arabian peninsula developed with Saudi Arabia and the smaller territories. This followed the British withdraw from the peninsula with most notably the transformation of Aden. For those who are studying the Middle East this is a great starting point to have a historical handle on how the problems developed pre 1979. Kelly is one of the foremost political experts in the area and the fact that this was primarily a British zone of influence for most of this time makes his view as a brit all the more valuable. Overall an excellent addition to the scholarship and still worth a look even today.

[Peter]

:-0 p85, p146, p154, pp421-2

at/in appropriate time/setting - p181, p183