Page 29 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Chapter One
Geographical Conditions

1 The changing importance of immutable
geographical factors
The geographical factors which determine a country's position in
relation to the rest of the world—its access to communication lines
such as rivers or the sea, its climate, the fertility of the land or its
natural resources—are fundamentally responsible for the quality of
life led by the inhabitants. These factors have to be considered as
immutable natural conditions. Some of them might have undergone
noticeable changes within historical times but this is hardly ever
realised within the span of one generation. What might change even
in the space of one decade, however, is the importance for the
population of one particular feature or another of the country’s
geography. The way in which certain geographical factors influence
and condition the life of the inhabitants can differ a great deal from
one century to another. Their impact either varies in intensity,
vanishes altogether or is reversed, depending on the socio-political
and economic situation of the area at a given point in time. The
geographical factors, for instance, which were at one time re­
sponsible for the country’s isolation from the mainstream of history,
become its vital strategic protection in another age. Similarly,
climatic factors which may enhance certain economic assets such as
the growth of pearl oysters may, a generation later, prove detrimental
to finding an economic alternative when the commodity ceases to be
in demand. Geographical proximity to an influential political,
religious or cultural power, too, can be beneficial to a region’s society
in a certain age, but become a burden when constellations change.
Statements about the bare scientific facts concerning the geog-
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