ABSTRACT
In writing on this subject it will be necessary to limit oneself to certain states and certain aspects of development, otherwise the subject will be too wide to tackle in the present survey. The eastern and northern shores of the Gulf, i.e. Persia and Iraq, al-Ihsa* province of Saudi Arabia, and Oman will therefore be excluded. The countries which will be studied are: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the Trucial States, with special emphasis on the first. As far as the nature of development is concerned, the present chapter will endeavour to survey the political aspect, together with other auxiliary factors which usually lead to development. From the first glance at those states, therefore, one can see that one is
confronted with two types of political unit. The first is an independent state and the second a group of amirates or shaikhdoms which fell under British protection as a result of special treaty relations. But Kuwait, the independent state of today, was until 1961 more or less a British protec torate too. It might be worth our while to notice that these states stretch on the western shore of the Arabian Gulf from its northernmost edge to its southernmost end with only one intermission, namely that of al-Ihsa’, a territory that lies between Kuwait in the north and Qatar in the south. In spite of the fact that these states vary widely in their systems of govern ment, it should be noted that there is a common factor among them. They are all Arabian territories, inhabited in the main by Arabian tribes who mostly belong to the cAdnani or northern division of Arabs, the southern being called Qahtani by Arab historians and traditionalists. For the sake of convenience and because most of the shaikhdoms will
be studied in other chapters, Kuwait will first be studied in detail, and the other protectorates, the shaikhdoms of Bahrain, Qatar and the seven Trucial States: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, cAjman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, will be dealt with at a later stage.
