Full bibliography

Scholars and students of the history and politics of the Sultanate of Oman will in all likelihood acknowledge John E. Peterson as the doyen of their field, being active in the study of this Gulf state for just over fifty years. Oman’s Transformation after 1970 is a follow-up to his 2007 book Oman’s Insurgencies, which provided a detailed historical account of the Jebel Akhdar (1955–59) and Dhofar (1963–c.1976) rebellions and the counter-insurgency campaigns Sultans Said bin Taimur (1932–70) and Qaboos bin Said (1970–2020) waged with British support to defeat them.Over the past fifty-five years, Oman has evolved from an impoverished tribal state under Britain’s informal imperial influence to a fully sovereign, prosperous, but absolute monarchy. It has close ties to the Western powers and other members of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), while playing an active role in regional diplomacy and preserving a semblance of neutrality (Oman has, for example, acted as a mediator between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran and has tried to broker peace between the Houthis and their enemies in Yemen). Although the Sultanate did experience some internal unrest during the 2011 “Arab Spring” (442–44), it has not only emerged as one of the most stable states in the Middle East but also managed a peaceful transition of power after Qaboos’s death in January 2020. This was not an outcome that contemporary observers would have anticipated in the context of both Qaboos’s seizure of power in a palace coup in July 1970 or his regime’s struggle for survival against insurgent movements both in the Southern province of Dhofar and Northern Oman.1