Middle East : Bahrain

Bahrain, the only island state in the Arab world, floats in Gulf waters between Saudi Arabia (to which it is tethered by the King Fahd Causeway) and Qatar. Bahrain's history is uniquely linked to the ancient Dilmun civilization, a powerful trading empire that arose in the third millenium B.C. and lasted for more than 2,000 years.

With its fertile land, fresh water, and important strategic location, Bahrain was a place of interest to the Sumerians, Greeks, Persians, Portuguese, Turks, Wahhabis, Omanis, and British, who made it a protectorate in 1861 and held it as such until 1971, when it became an independent emirate.

Bahrain's economic history, like that of the other Gulf States, can be divided into two eras: pearl diving and oil drilling. The collapse of the pearl industry in the early 1930s occurred nearly simultaneously with the drilling, in Bahrain, of the first successful oil well in the Middle East by Standard Oil Company of Southern California (SoCal). From a hilltop in Bahrain, a young SoCal engineer spotted a geologic formation in Saudi Arabia that he instinctively recognized as likely to be oil-bearing. The rest is history.

Today, Bahrain is the fastest-growing economy in Arabia and the fastest-growing financial center in the world.

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