On February 22nd, 1972, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani appeared on TV promising a new era of prosperity for Qatar, linking “the glorious present with an ancient past”. Sheikh Khalifa’s accession speech embodied Qatar’s independence, which had been declared on September 1st 1971 after two decades of monumental social, cultural, and economic changes that had started in the 1950s. This proposal focuses on the development of a Qatari political consciousness during the 1950s in light of regional events like the nationalization of the oil industry in Iran by Mohammad Mossadegh in 1951, the seizure of the Suez Canal by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Six Day War, or the Dhofar rebellion. Many of these affairs had specific resonances in Qatar, particularly in terms of strikes and protests. Domestically, the 1950s saw the electrification of Kahraba Street in Doha, the development of oil camps in Dukhan, and significant internal migrations across the country, mostly to Doha. An important outtake is that the urban and social changes that took place in Qatar were a process of co-creation of the oil camp, coastal cities, the country, and the capital, expanding urban studies in Qatar beyond Doha. The memoirs of Ali Khalifa Al Kuwari or Lotfi Sumi, a member of various political groups in Qatar during these years and a Palestinian preceptor and later advisor to sheikh Khalifa serve as the sources for this account, besides British documentation and newspaper archives mostly from Cairo and Beirut. All in all, this work is a social history that focuses on the connections between Qatar, the Middle East, and the rest of the world, explaining the context that enabled the political and social outcome of the country. While most works on this topic focus on either the role of the British and the ruling family, this project incorporates the Qatari population as a key agent in the global combination of factors that led to the stable creation of the Qatari monarchy as it functions today. It is also an urban history that studies the built environment in Qatar and its relation to the social fabric.