Page 344 - UAE Truncal States_Neat
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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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