How Kuwait Became a Nation

How Kuwait became a nation is a story with which most Americans are unfamiliar. It would not be an overestimate to say that many Americans were totally unaware of the simple existence of the nation of Kuwait, until Iraq invaded the country and drew the United States into a war with whose fallout we are even now dealing . Now that hardly a week passes when we do not hear mention of Kuwait, it may be interesting to know more about how Kuwait became a nation in the first place.

The geographic location of Kuwait, in the southeastern corner of Arabia, was likely responsible for its early habitation by Arab settlers in ancient times. Because the land that is today Kuwait also stood at the head of the Persian Gulf it is not surprising that it quickly became a trading center between early civilizations and was well known by Indian, Sumerian and ancient Greek traders.

Kuwait made its entrance onto the more modern stage in the 1700's when Kuwait City was created. In the following century the land area around the Kuwait City that today makes up the nation of Kuwait was an area that would have fulfilled the land cravings of a number of conflicting parties, especially the sprawling Ottoman Empire. To secure its safety from these large and aggressive forces, Kuwait in 1897 signed an agreement with the British which included the promise of British defense of Kuwait.

At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and the countries who were victorious in the war proceeded to divide up the land area of the former empire. In the case of Kuwait, the end of World War I meant formalizing borders between itself and its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and remaining an independent sheikdom under the protection of the British.

It was not until 1961 that the British finally ended their protectorate status and domination in what was called the Treaty of Friendship. The main result of that treaty was that Kuwait became a fully independent emirate. Just two years later the independent nation of Kuwait was welcomed into the international community of the United Nations .

In less than three decades, in 1989, Iraq used the pretext of an oil price conflict to make an aggressive move on the sovereign state of Kuwait. Following the direction of Saddam Hussein, the Army of Iraq crossed the border between Iraq and Kuwait and declared the small nation summarily annexed. This action was reversed in 1990 as a result of the Persian Gulf War, in which allied forces including American, European and Arab troops defeated the forces of Iraq pushing them back across the border and re-establishing the sovereignty of Kuwait.

While the person of the Emir, the royal leader of Kuwait, has changed several times since the 1990 war , the basic system of government, the ascendancy of Islamists in the parliament, and the independence of Kuwait have remained constant.

Sources: www.historyofnations.net/asia/kuwait
www.northernstarkuwait.com