Kuwait

From the Bronze Age island of Dilmun and Alexander's Ikaros to a pearling port, an oil-funded welfare state, and the war that defined a nation.

Kuwait occupies a sheltered bay at the head of the Persian Gulf, a crossroads where Bronze Age Dilmun traders and, later, the Greeks of Alexander's empire left their mark on Failaka island. The modern state grew from a small settlement founded in the early 18th century, where the Bani Utub clans chose the Al Sabah family to rule around 1752, building a prosperity on pearling, shipbuilding, and trade. A 1899 agreement with Britain shielded the sheikhdom from Ottoman absorption, and the discovery of oil transformed a poor port into one of the world's wealthiest states after full independence on 19 June 1961. Kuwait endured a seven-month Iraqi occupation in 1990 and was liberated in the 1991 Gulf War, after which it rebuilt and remains a constitutional emirate with the Gulf's oldest elected parliament.