The paper examines the history of labour governance and resistance in the Gulf. It argues that the contemporary governance, regulatory, and resistance environment for labour have clear lineages in the past. With an empirical focus on Omani labour history, this research shows how the practices of recruiting, framing, and segmenting labour alongside the experiences of working and resisting segmentation have profoundly shaped the growth and organisation of wage labour in Oman and the region. Using process tracing and contrapuntal reading as methods of analysis (Said 1993; Bilgin 2016; Chowdhry 2016; Bennet and Elman 2006), this paper takes a journey through multiple archival and interview sources to trace the lineages of differentiation and the lineages of resistance. Adopting a labour-centred approach, the paper first traverses three key legacies of governing work and workers – the colonial modes of circulating, disciplining, and classifying labour; the oil industry’s human resources recruitment and management practices with a focus on Shell in Oman; and the framing and management of labour in national economic development planning. Second, it traces discourses about workers and how these discourses and prejudices are persistent technologies of governance that influence practices and assessments of employment and development. Finally, it assembles these dynamics together and shows the ensuant contestation to and within them over time, including connections to antiimperialist movements and activism, and various manifestations of worker mobilisation and protest. The historical, labour-centred exercise contained in this paper reveals a genealogy of practice and discourse underpinned by racial capitalism that have shaped work life in Oman and the Gulf more widely.