ABSTRACT
The chapters collected in this volume move beyond the focus on cultural production and the events of 1968 in Europe and the United States and study that momentous year as part of the broader political trajectories of the Global Sixties and the global connections between events, localities, and movements. If this is the approach, then the Gulf region was certainly integrated into and affected by the broader developments across the world in the sixties. For was it not during a protest against the visit of the Shah of Iran to Berlin in 1967 that a West German policeman, whom we now know worked for East German intelligence, shot Benno Ohnesorg, whose death was one of the catalysts for the German 1968 movement? 1 And was the militarization of parts of the German Left not partly a result of their contacts with the Palestinians, with whom they trained in the Middle East? Algeria, Palestine, and the broader Arabian and Gulf movements (including those in Iran and Dhofar) were internationalized struggles that linked Europe with the Middle East and led to a cross-fertilization of ideas and organizational tactics before and after 1968. 2
