<i>Sawt al‐Bahrain</i> (1950–1954): Nationalism, Modernity and Belonging in a Bahraini Magazine

ABSTRACT In 1950, a group of young Bahraini intellectuals began publishing a magazine entitled Sawt al‐Bahrain (Voice of Bahrain). It was the second periodical in the country's history and the first to be completely controlled by Bahrainis. Its goal was to promote a patriotic and nationalist agenda and create a space for the dissemination of ideas amongst the nascent intelligentsia in Bahrain and the broader Gulf region. The magazine came to be distributed in most major Gulf coastal cities, Riyadh, Mecca and Medina, Cairo, Baghdad, Basra, the Levant, Sanaa, Tunis, Zanzibar, Karachi and London. It was thus not simply a local publication concerned solely with Bahrain, but rather built bridges between Bahrain and the broader Arab world. Using Sawt al‐Bahrain as a case study, this paper highlights how educated Bahrainis articulated their political identity and contended with modernity through the press. It also draws a connection between the magazine and Bahrain's reformist movement in the 1950s. This paper follows Benedict Anderson in considering the role of the intelligentsia in the colonial world to be ‘central to the rise of nationalism.’ Additionally, the paper expands on Anderson's arguments on the relationship between print media and nationalism. Anderson portrays the consumption of print media as a one‐way process in which individuals, through the act of reading the newspaper, become part of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. This paper analyses how those same readers can also become producers of media. By publishing Sawt al‐Bahrain , the Bahraini intelligentsia inserted themselves within the Arab press scene as interlocutors. They engaged with Arab peers and showcased their belonging to the larger Arab nation, as well as their understanding of what it means to be modern Arab citizens.