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13 Epilogue: The Emergence

of the United Arab
Emirates

In 1962, in an address given before the Royal Central Asian Society
in London, J. E. H. Boustead remarked that life in Abu Dhabi
had changed very little during the past two centuries.1 While this
observation might have applied in 1962, it would never hold ground
today, sixteen years later. The radical transformation of Abu Dhabi
can only be classified as one of the phenomena of the modern
era, so rapid and fundamental has it been.
This alteration would not, of course, have been possible without
the discovery of vast oil reserves, underground and offshore, which
are currently bringing thousands of millions of dollars a year into
the shaykhdom. Although oil was struck ofT Abu Dhabi in 1958,
it was not until eight years later that the inevitable diversification
of the shaykhdom’s economic and social structure took place. Until
then, Abu Dhabi and the other Trucial states remained in the
background of international affairs, still under the aegis of Britain.
Since the end of World War II, their internal development had
come under greater scrutiny from the British Government, as oil
exploration began to be taken seriously again. With this new policy
of participation in local affairs came a reorganisation of British
administration. In keeping with the pre-war decision, the Political
Residency for the Gulf was moved from Bushire to Bahrain, in
1946. The office of Residency Agent in Sharjah was abolished
in 1949, and from 1929 to 1953, when a Political Agency for
the Trucial Coast was set up, a permanently resident Political
Officer was appointed from the Foreign Office in London. The
Political Agent, with headquarters in the burgeoning town of Dubai,
assumed much greater responsibility and authority than any former
S'

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