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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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