Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of Planet B. Everything must change. I'm Harpreet

Corpall. This episode features an extended edition of our interview with Lalek Alini,

professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London, and author amongst

many titles of the book Cinew of War and Trade, Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula.

You may have already had clips of this interview in our Planet B episode on Water and the Global

Green New Deal. If you haven't, make sure you check that out on the Navara Media Podcast feed.

My name is Lalek Halili and I'm a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of

London and I'm speaking to you from Hackney in London. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can

you begin by telling us about your books in use of War and Trade and about the research you did

for it? What is the book about and what spurred you to write it? So Cinew of War and Trade is about

the development of maritime transport infrastructures in the Arabian Peninsula over the course of the

long 20th century and actually the primary focus really falls on the period after the Second World War

but it does cover a little bit of the prehistory of the emergence of these ports there and part of

the reason that I was particularly interested in writing this book was because I was very curious

about the fact that one of the largest ports and container ports in the world is located in Dubai.

Dubai is a city state. It's got a few million people but it doesn't have a very large hinterland

and in fact the entirety of the population that lives on the Arabian Peninsula is no more than

a few dozen millions and yet here is one of the ports that's one of the largest ports in the

world after some of the bigger and more recognizable names like Singapore or Shanghai or Hong Kong

and so I was curious about why it was that this port, Jabal Ali in Dubai had to come so big

and I also was very curious about the way that the Arabian Peninsula connects eastward and westward

it's longer history being situated in sort of the roots of trade between Europe and Asia and I

...