Mobile Images: Stamps as Branding Tools in the Gulf States

Hindelang, Laura (2023). Mobile Images: Stamps as Branding Tools in the Gulf States. In: Wippel, Steffen (ed.) Branding the Middle East. Communication Strategies and Image Building from Qom to Casablanca. Studies on Modern Orient: Vol. 38 (pp. 377-382). Berlin, Boston: DeGruyter https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741100-022

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This contribution discusses the relevance of stamps as tools of political place-branding using the example of pictorial stamps issued by Gulf states in the second half of the 20th century. Gaining complete control over postal services was a crucial step towards political independence for the Gulf states that were either Trucial States or British quasi-protectorates. With the takeover came the task of creating new stamp designs and developing a political iconography that could advertise the process of nation-building. Stamps are especially powerful as mobile transmitters of images and as the “business cards of states” (Walter Benjamin). A close reading of a small selection of pictorial stamps issued by Kuwait and other Gulf states reveals the visual strategies employed and the motifs and iconographies used for self-promotion vis-à-vis both national and international audiences. The analysis shows that images of maps and national emblems, iconic architecture, and petroleum infrastructure became seminal markers in the place-branding strategy of the Gulf states.

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