Page 344 - UAE Truncal States

The External Jn/7uonces

be referred lo a tribunal of the shaikhs.112 The Trucial States Order in
Council of 1959 made provision for the transfer of jurisdiction in
such “cases as may be agreed from time to lime between Her
Majesty’s Government and the Trucial Sheikhs”.113 But the British
Government endeavoured to save non-Muslim persons involved in a
criminal case from being tried in the Ruler’s court.114 In practice a
joint court was rarely set up, and the mixed cases were dealt with in
such a way that the accused could defend himself in the court by
which he would be tried in a non-mixed case.
The impact of two decades of limited British jurisdiction within
the Trucial Slates was not very great at the lime, because the number
of cases were few and often involved matters which were not of much
relevance to the local scene, such as international agreements
concerning air traffic control and postal services. But the actual
process of receding jurisdiction on the part of the British Govern­
ment helped considerably to stir the local authorities into action,
formulating their legislative policy on a federal level, and this
actually speeded the promulgation of a number of regulations. It
made the Rulers and the new federal government very aware of the
various fields in which a legal vacuum existed. The machinery for
legislation thus gained greater prominence in the new State than it
might have done without the necessity to replace certain British-
made regulations.
The Development Office

General
By describing the efforts of the Development Office of the Trucial
States Council in detail, the intention is not to over-emphasise the
British-patronised development efforts, but rather to provide a well
documented account of the slate of affairs in various fields of
development before the federal authorities began. Longterm, the
influence on the population as a whole, of the practical achievements
of the Development Office, may be less important than the seeds
which were sown in the minds of young people,115 when they were
first made aware by their Arab teachers of the cohesion of the Arab
culture and of the trends in Arab nationalism. The establishment of
the Egyptian educational mission in Sharjah in 1958/9 was in some
ways the turning point, at which the influence of the British
Government, companies, and individuals, became overshadowed by

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