Sinews of War and Trade

On the map of global trade, China is now the factory of the world. A parade of ships full of raw commodities-iron ore, coal, oil-arrive in its ports, and fleets of container ships leave with manufactured goods in all directions. The oil that fuels China's manufacturing comes primarily from the Arabian peninsula. Much of the material shipped from China are transported through the ports of Arabian peninsula, Dubai's Jabal Ali port foremost among them. China's 'maritime silk road' flanks the peninsula on all sides.Sinews of War and Trade is the story of what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructure has meant not only for the Arabian peninsula itself, but for the region and the world beyond. The book is an account of how maritime transportation is not simply an enabling companion of trade, but central to the very fabric of global capitalism. The ports that serve maritime trade, logistics, and hydrocarbon transport create racialised hierarchies of labour, engineer the lived environment, aid the accumulation of capital regionally and globally, and carry forward colonial regimes of profit, law and administration.

Praise for Time in the Shadows:[A] groundbreaking new book., Praise for Time in the Shadows:Laleh Khalili's Time in the Shadows is the ghostly other of The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Deft and informative, the book provides a historical excavation of the imperatives of counter-insurgency doctrines-from the ideas that drove the European colonial wars in the dying days of those empires to the U.S. and Israeli states of warfare in our own times. A serious book that should be required reading., Praise for Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine:Khalili is to be congratulated for her perception that commemorative practices would offer an illuminating path to reworking a history that combines tragedy and resistance in unusual measure. The skill with which she brings together wide-ranging archival research and live-in observation has produced an outstanding study that balances cool analysis with lively sympathy., Praise for Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine:This eloquent, engaging, well-researched book ... is an essential volume in any collection on Palestinian politics and society., If the maritime industry represents the circulatory system of the modern global economy, then Laleh Khalili has offered us a uniquely insightful forensic assessment of how this capillary system took shape through history and the central role played by ports on the Arabian Peninsula. Her book, Sinews of War and Trade, makes clear that these ports have been far more than just tacit intersections of international trade. They have played and continue to play a vital role in framing racial labour hierarchies, accumulating capital in specific hands, and reinforcing colonial regimes of profit, law and administration. Both lucid and nuanced, the book offers a masterful study in the ways that violence and security as well as licit and illicit trade, get negotiated in and by these ports. This is one of those rare pieces of academic research that is at once readable and accessible for the lay public while also making a genuine contribution to the relevant historical scholarship.

Laleh Khalili is a Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies.