For Country and Company: Consolidating Power through Development and Company Towns in Saudi Arabia, 1947-1969

My project demonstrates how the Saudi Arabian government established their control over a dissident Eastern Province. Examining a mixture of ARAMCO, American, and Saudi sources, my thesis aims to expand the historiography of urban history, Saudi Arabia, and company towns in the twentieth century. Through the lens of company towns, urban development, and military modernization, I show how Saudi Arabia was effectively able to disrupt local power structures and replace them with their own. Urban development provides an effective tool through which I assess larger trends in theSaudi-ARAMCO relationship, the ruler-subject relationship, and sedentarization policy during the 1940s through the 1960