Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0282/02829.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 35KB | 551 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02829}
$Pretitle{385D}
$Title{Persian Gulf States
Chapter 1A.   Historical and Cultural Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Laraine Newhouse Carter}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{gulf
islam
arabia
al
arabs
states
tribal
oman
trade
century}
$Date{1984}
$Log{Figure 2.*0282902.scf
}
Country:     Persian Gulf States
Book:        Persian Gulf States, An Area Study: Introduction
Author:      Laraine Newhouse Carter
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984

Chapter 1A.   Historical and Cultural Setting

     In mid-1984 world attention remained focused on the seemingly
interminable Iran-Iraq War, and foreign and local observers speculated that
the war might spread to the other oil-rich states on the Persian Gulf
littoral. Because of their financial support of Iraq's war effort and as a
result of Iranian threats, several of the Gulf states-particularly those with
Shia populations-worried as much about the possibility of internal subversion
as about overt attack. Bahrain had already experienced an Iranian-inspired
coup attempt in December 1981. This, however, was but one of several concerns
of the Gulf societies in 1984. Others included the drop in oil revenues, an
increase in Islamic fundamentalism, and the effect that both might have on the
expectations and aspirations of its citizen body. In the single generation
since the independence that brought them control of their future and the
burgeoning oil revenues, Gulf societies had changed from being largely
impoverished and underdeveloped to being affluent, increasingly educated, and
physically healthy. Although ruled anachronistically by paternalistic and
patriarchal tribal leaders, the citizenry had taken an ever-improving standard
of living as their right.

     Trade-not oil-was the first medium to bring life to the Arabian shore of
the Gulf. In the century before the discovery of oil and the subsequent use of
oil revenues for improving economic strength and for social welfare projects,
the Arab states that line the western littoral were at the most somnolent
point in their long and turbulent history.

     There is evidence that before human beings had migrated to the European
geographic area, indigenous traders of the western coast of the Gulf were
enriching the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent both commercially
and culturally. Despite periods of decline, such trade appears to have
continued for millennia. Gulf trade was active during the ancient period but
extraordinarily so by medieval times. In the ninth century A.D. Gulf traders
were travelling to China and returning up Gulf waters to Basrah, facilitating
the exchange of ideas and goods among the great civilizations of the time. The
peoples of the Gulf coast, unlike the inhabitants of the interior of the
Arabian Peninsula, had always been exposed to outside influences. The cultural
and economic area to which the Arab Gulf states belonged was not at all
limited to Arabia but included the whole of the Gulf area. Arabs and Iranians
moved with nonchalance from one side of the Gulf to the other.

     One persistent factor in Gulf history is the constant rivalry between
merchant states and the desire for hegemony. Another factor, destined to be
more fatal to Gulf trade, was the interest in the area by outsiders-Europeans,
Ottoman Turks, the Wahhabis (see Glossary) of central Arabia, and the
Egyptians. After the entrance of the Europeans but before European power
reached its apogee in the Gulf, Hormuz-located near the Iranian coast-was for
a time the foremost trading center in the world (see fig. 1). A popular Arab
and Iranian saying is "If the world were a ring, Hormuz would be its jewel."

     Largely because of events in Europe, the British were able to outstay the
Dutch and slowly but effectively to build up power in the area. Tribal
animosities and rivalries and mutual piracy among Gulf states served British
interests, and by means of a series of exclusive treaties the British
eventually pacified the Gulf. Although local merchants were still active, they
were considerably circumscribed by these treaties. In the early years of the
nineteenth century, new Gulf powers, particularly the states of Kuwait and
Bahrain, were emerging and achieving great wealth through trade. Because the
states had few natural resources other than pearls and date palms, maritime
activity was not only the easiest way for Arab Gulf states to achieve wealth
but also virtually the only way they could survive. A dramatic change in
living conditions occurred, therefore, when European steamships and the
associated technology began to appear in the Gulf in the 1860s. Although the
Arabs were capable of hand-building ships that could carry several tons of
merchandise to China and back, they had not developed industrially and could
not begin to compete with the European vessels. Fossilized into their
political positions and isolated from much influence by British protectorate
treaties, the Arab Gulf states went into a decline and were revived only with
the discovery of oil.

     In the period before oil, Gulf Arabs fell back on their natural resources
(meager as they were) until the values of these, too, were threatened. In the
1920s the Japanese began producing cultured pearls, and the economic
well-being of Bahrain, Qatar, and much of the Trucial Coast area (since 1971
the United Arab Emirates-UAE) was reduced further. Arabs subsisted largely on
minor commerce and other dealings with the Europeans who called there. The
worldwide depression of the 1930s reduced traffic in the Gulf and consequently
reduced income for those who provided services. The people of Dubai, deciding
old ways were best, became active in smuggling gold to India.

     Oil and the change in British priorities, particularly after World War
II, altered the situation. The discovery of oil and the practical utilization
of wealth accruing from it were intially slow processes. Gulf Arabs were
awakening from a long sleep, and the lack of immediate reform was largely the
result of ignorance and underexposure to the kinds of positive social,
cultural, and economic change that money could buy. The Gulf has never been a
monolith, and the individual states moved at different rates depending on
custom and income. A curious reversal had taken place. Oman, Ras al Khaymah,
and Sharjah, once the most powerful of the Gulf entities, became the poorest.

     Once the states realized their affluent position and what it could do,
the traditional welfare system built into the tribal order served them well.
In 1984 none of the "welfare" states emerging in the modern Gulf was
socialistic; yet all that had oil money were extravagant, by any standard,
in spending for the benefit of their citizens. This was not an idea
introduced by the West; it was rather an expansion of the tribal belief,
reinforced by Islam, that no man is rich if a member of his clan is poor.

Pre-Islamic Arabia

The Civilizations of Prehistoric Arabia

     Archaeological investigations of pre-Islamic Arabia are still in an
embryonic state, and the results are hypothetical and controversial at best.
Through the mid-1900s few people had the physical endurance or the survival
techniques crucial to investigate the area. Scarcity of water, the
difficulties of desert transport, and, until the 1940s, hostile tribes made
systematic research a heroic undertaking., Further, very little was known
about present-day Arabia beyond its coastal settlements. Initial
archaeological discoveries are often the accidental finds of explorers eager
to investigate the isolated land and map its interior.

     The oldest evidence of civilized man in northern Arabia is artifacts
found 90 kilometers to the north of Dhahran on the coast of the Gulf (see
fig. 2). Dated to 5000 B.C., they are identical with those of the Al
Ubaid culture of Mesopotamia, the first people to cultivate and settle the
Fertile Crescent and the ancestors of the Sumerians, the first known people
to develop in high