Overview and history
Bahrain is an Arabic word meaning ‘Two Seas’, referring to the island's two sources of water, sweet water springs and salty water.
The discovery of oil in Bahrain in the 1930s has enabled the creation of an attractive and modern infrastructure, an elegant skyline, luxury hotels, a bustling international airport, excellent roads and telecommunications and a thriving port.
Bahrain’s advanced communication and transport networks have made the Island a natural choice as a base for many international companies with regional interests and the country has a diverse blend of nationalities co-existing in a thriving multi-cultural environment.
A founding member of the World Trade Organisation, Bahrain is also an active member of numerous other multinational organisations. These include the United Nations, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Arab League, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organisation, the Islamic Development Bank, and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, to name but a few.
Together with its recent landmark Free Trade Agreement with the US, Bahrain enjoys bilateral trade and economic agreements with countries such as Australia, China, France, India, Jordan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, and the UK. Bahrain has also been recognised as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ of the United States, placing the country among a very small group of nations that enjoy this status. This is testament to Bahrain’s longstanding political, military, economic and cultural relationship with the USA.
Bahrain's heritage as a cultural and trading centre dates back more than four millennia.
The Island was then known as Dilmun, and was home to an ancient civilisation that played a central trading role between the peoples of the Indus Valley (now India) to the south and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) to the north. Dilmun’s capital was a major port whose remains are visible today at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bahrain Fort (Qal’at al Bahrain).
The Kingdom also features in one of the world’s oldest and most enduring pieces of literature – the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the island was home to the source of eternal youth. The tale is believed to refer to the pearls from the shallow gulf waters around Bahrain, which were one of Bahrain’s biggest exports for generations.
In more recent years, Bahrain has been a regional pioneer and became a specialist business centre. The Kingdom has a whole series of Gulf firsts - from discovering oil, to diversifying the economy, to providing education for both males and females from the 1920s onwards, to becoming the first democracy with universal suffrage in the region.
Bahrain is, today, the fastest growing economy in the Arab world, according to a United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia study in 2006. Bahrain also has the freest economy in the Arab world - and has been for more than 13 years - according to the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal.