Beyond “Man” vs. Nature: Pearling and the Construction of Gender, Generation, and Heritage in Bahrain

Heritage sites and studies of the pearling industry in Arab Gulf nations focus predominantly on men who labored as merchants, boat captains, and pearl divers. They represent merchants as having reaped the greatest returns and divers as having endured the greatest hardships over the history of the industry. Recently published memoirs and interviews feature elder men’s recollections of their experiences as divers during their youth; these men focus on the hardships that they endured and attribute their success – even their survival – to chance or divine intervention. British records from the 1930s not only document the tribulations that divers reported; they also, as this article argues, depict human agency – instead of nature, chance, or divine intervention – as the main source of misfortune for divers. These findings trouble “official” representations of pearl diving, particularly the treatment of the divers, at such heritage sites.

Making “A Machine of Pearls” in the Seventeenth Century

This chapter considers the place of pearls and pearl fisheries in the context of Iberian crisis of the seventeenth century. As arbitristas, or experts, proposed all sorts of solutions intended to address Iberia’s financial and political woes, this zeitgeist of improvement shaped plans for, and reflections on, pearl fishing around the globe. These pearl-fishing proposals drew on a mixture of custom and innovation. As observers of pearl diving in the Caribbean continued to report horrific suffering alongside remarkably autonomous practices by enslaved workers, the Spanish crown supported proposals for Pacific coast fisheries that relied on diverse skilled crew as well as new diving technologies designed to render enslaved workers unnecessary. The chapter focuses on the Cardona Company voyages to California, which included black laborers as well as levantisco, or Levantine, divers and elaborate diving suits. The chapter also considers how the vexing yet appealing complexity of pearls and pearl-fishing settlements were reflected in a 1680 account of Sri Lankan pearl fishing written by Portuguese author João de Ribeiro and in the 1681 Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias (the reissue of the body of laws) governing the Spanish Indies.