Page 225 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Six

191 h century. The growing foreign demand for pearls at that lime
meant that ever-increasing profits were being made. Beduin who
participated in a pearling co-operative organised on a tribal basis
also earned more cash; whereas previously the season’s savings were
just enough to purchase the few imported commodities required,
now there was extra cash available. The beduin could either buy
more camels, and pay for them to be looked after in his absence, or he
could buy established date gardens and arrange for them to be
tended by other tribesmen. Others pul their money back into the
pearling industry, thereby speeding the transformation from an
industry of tribal co-operatives to an industry with entrepreneurs
and a whole strata of participants who became locked into a system
of financial interdependence. Most pearling boats of Abu Dhabi town
were eventually owned by individuals, who because of the cost of
fitting out the boats and financing their food supplies in advance,
required a system of loans which was adapted from the practices
which were already well established in some other ports of the
Trucial States.
This system led to a new stratification of the society of the desert
shaikhdom of Abu Dhabi. A growing number of families could afford
to buy their own pearling boats and even make enough profit in a
season or two to build a good two-storey house in Abu Dhabi town.
They spent less and less lime at their traditional properly in the Lfwa,
gradually becoming absentee landlords, and some even saved
enough to buy a date garden in one of the villages in the Buraimi
oasis. This change for the better in the economic situation of these
families meant also that they now had the means to employ others to
work for them. Some of the tribesmen who remained in the desert
were paid to look after the camels, lend the gardens, bring firewood
to the town and provide transport for the seasonal move to the oases.
During this period of increasing prosperity a shortage of labourers
developed which was covered by importing slaves. They worked as
domestic servants and were employed to tend date gardens,3 but they
were used most profitably by their owners as divers.

Changing population pattern of Abu Dhabi town
Abu Dhabi town grew in size with the expansion of the pearling
industry. Many of the formerly beduin tribesmen took to staying
there for the winter and lived off the money they earned from pearling
during the summer, or they obtained advances from their captains on

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