Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula

The Belt and Road in Global Perspective project is delighted to welcome Laleh Khalili (Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary U of London), who will discuss her book “Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula” with Joseph McQuade (Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy).

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.