Page 26 - Truncal States to UAE_Neat

Introduction

Within the span of a few years the new State of the United Arab
Emirates, before it was a decade old, had become a focal point of
interest for oil-consuming countries of both the industrialised and
the Third World. In the UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi, decisions have
to be made on oil supplies and prices which affect companies,
governments and people world wide. While its oil is being pumped
out to sea to tankers which sail from the UAE to distant destinations
on the globe, goods, technology, people and ideas streaming into this
country are contributing to a rapid transformation of society, the
urban environment and the desert.
Until the time of the 1973 oil crisis, historical studies of the
shaikhdoms which joined together in the federation in December
1971 were of interest only to a limited number of specialists and
people who lived and worked in the area; even more so because
information about the domestic and external affairs of the Trucial
States does not fill vast archives but has to be gleaned from the
accumulated documentary material concerning the entire Gulf. Now
that so many foreign people, governments and institutions are
interested in the UAE, it is more than just an academic exercise to
analyse its society today by tracing its roots in the Islamic, tribal and
historical context, as well as by gauging the process of institution­
building and by examining the positions of the decision-makers in
relation to society.
At the turn of the century the population of the shaikhdoms, then
collectively called the Trucial States, numbered some 80,000 souls.
During the rapid expansion of the pearling industry leading up to its
collapse at the end of the 1920s, the population structure was
affected by a concentration of people on the coast and an influx of
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