ABSTRACT
By 1971 European colonial authority in Arabia had passed away and the new state structure was complete. With minor exceptions the boundaries of states were defined and central governments had extended their power and elaborated their institutions. Significant changes in economic and social institutions had begun in some areas but only in Saudi Arabia, Kuwayt and Qatar had oil wealth been sufficient to generate substantial alterations by the 1960s. It was the extraordinary increase in oil revenues during the 1970s which made possible development programmes which resulted in much deeper social transformations in those and other states. It was during the 1970s and 1980s that the two Yemens also entered on periods of rapid political, economic and social change, partly as a by product of the oil wealth in neighbouring countries but also as a consequence of revolutionary political changes within those states. Finally, it was after 1971 that Oman began a programme of modernization.
