Page 275 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Seven

Warehouses, godowns and asbestos sheds grew up in the restricted
area between the Ruler’s office and the Indian consulate, the creek
and the built-up quarters of Dubai and the BastakTyah. The
merchants were expected to arrange to have their goods removed to
their own storage places soon after clearance.
The Second World War and its aftermath
Within this frame of the physical environment and the general
conditions of life, the prosperity of the entire community depended
largely on the opportunities for trade abroad. The decline of the
pearling trade in the 1930s was a blow which triggered off the decline
in the prosperity of Dubai. As alternative trade was being built up,
there came the interruption of the Second World War. It not only
brought much of the previous trade to a standstill and dashed all
hopes of enterprising merchants, but also meant near-starvation for
many inhabitants of Dubai. Rice and sugar were in acute shortage.
The British Government supplied the Trucial Shaikhdoms with
food, which was distributed in rationed amounts through the
channels of local governments in co-operation with the known
headmen of quarters and neighbourhoods. Sugar and tea formed
part of this supply, both commodities being in even shorter supply in
Iran. In Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other Arab Gulf ports, people
who had bought either of these goods cheaply as part of the ration
but did not need all of them, sold them to agents who shipped them to
the black market of Iran. The British Government in India severely
clamped down on these practices and if smugglers’ launches were
caught the cargo was burnt or confiscated. Sometimes other non-
rationed goods were temporarily plentiful in India or Iran and a
black market would develop for these goods in the Trucial States
ports. Towards the end of the war, even the black market was
depleted, and according to local sources some deaths from starvation
did occur in Dubai town, where a large part of the population had no
access to any locally-produced supplies such as dates or milk.
Dubai, between the 1930s and the mid-1950s, provides a suitable
example of how external economic developments and domestic
forces may change the stratification within the society of a town in
the Trucial States. The group near the bottom of the social ladder
during the first two decades of this century, the haulers and divers on
the pearling boats, became either unemployed or had to accept any
1 job such as helping to offload ships or build up the bank of the
casua
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