Page 46 - The Origins of the United Arab Emirates_Neat

• • •
I hr ()ii/iin\ of llir lhnlr<l Arab Umirales
IM Itlll I 1.(111(1 • in
• i«»i Delhi considered the appointment necessary,
.•ml i In' Inal In* was Ml in abeyance.
,, 11 was mil uniil 1930 (hat the decision to include the Trucial
.
t.na.i III (lie air-route to India was reached. The rulers’ reluctance
,n Ki’iiiii die required facilities then became a reality that had
In be dealt with immediately, and all the previous discussions of
policy seemed academic by contrast. Ways and means to enforce
Initish priorities began to be evolved to suit the problems as they
arose; and the granting to Britain of oil concessions for which
it had been pressing intensified the process. Although non-interference
in internal affairs, as slated by Curzon in his Sharjah address
of 1903, remained the official policy, the fact belied the theory.
It is difficult to give a precise definition of the form that the
modified policy took in the 1930s: each case was dealt with separately,
always accompanied by claims of ‘non-interference’. The situation
was best described by Hugh Weightman, the Political Agent in
Bahrain in 1939, who voiced his uncase at this discrepancy:

let us be strictly fair and remember, as the Coast remembers,
how often we have had to resort to ‘power politics’, how often
a deal has been clinched or an argument ended by the appearance
of a warship, or a threat, expressed or implied, at direct action.
At intervals over the century the ships have fired their guns. . . .l5

This is probably the most realistic of the contemporary definitions
of policy. Despite the fact that any assertions of British interference
in the Coast’s affairs were being shrugged oil, Weightman realised
that such interference existed and to a considerable extent. Little
had changed from the prewar days:

The forms of control were as varied as the challenges. As a
general policy Britain disdained direct protectorates or control
of internal affairs of the littoral states; as an equally general
exception to that policy, the same internal affairs received close
British attention whenever deemed necessary.10

REORGANISATION OF ADMINISTRATION

The active reorganisation by Britain of the administration of its
interests in the Middle East was the natural outcome of post-war
l had a direct bearing on the Arab shaykhdoms in

under but had been left in abeyance until .92., when definite
before 19145