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.