teachers from Iraq and Syria. The radicals made plain their goal of expelling the British and upending absolute tribal rule. Pan-Arab and anti-British graffiti sprouted everywhere.
Much of the opposition focused on Hawley, the British political resident in Dubai. Hawley would attend a seemingly innocuous event, like a school sports day, and, instead of greeting him with the Union Jack, jeering students would wave flags of the United Arab Republic, Nasser’s short-lived union of Egypt and Syria. One morning Hawley woke to find the Union Jack missing from his residential compound. He found it floating in the creek. The British knew the end of their 152-year “colony-on-the-cheap” was near. The air smelled of rebellion, and many among Dubai’s prominent families became Nasser’s acolytes. 27
“It’s impossible to overstate Nasser’s effect,” says Anthony Harris, a British diplomat in Egypt and Sudan during Nasser’s time. Later, he became UAE ambassador. “It was the first time an Arab leader stood up to the West. He had this honeyed voice. People fell into trances when he spoke. The British were scared that Nasserism would sweep them out of the Arab world.”
Nasser’s revolutionaries might have ousted the British and carried off the Gulf sheikhs. But their timing was bad. Competing with independence fever were new opportunities to get rich. Abu Dhabi had oil, and the ruler suddenly had income to distribute. In Dubai, which had not yet struck oil, Sheikh Rashid understood that a boom was on the way, requiring construction and huge imports of goods. Without oil income, he bought off his opponents with business concessions. The families fomenting revolt were the first recipients. Christopher Davidson, an English scholar who has written extensively on the end of British rule, says that the largest Dubai merchant families whose names now adorn shopping malls and car dealerships were the most vehement Arab nationalists of the 1950s.
“The British advice was not to give blatant handouts, but to give prominent families exclusive trade licenses. If you make one family, say,the sole importer of Mercedes cars, you make them billionaires very quickly,” he says. The revolutionaries gave up their fight to get rich.
Perhaps nowhere begged for revolutionary change more than did Abu Dhabi before 1966. This sheikhdom had one of the world’s largest underground reservoirs of oil, and it was governed by Sheikh Shakhbut, a ruler who lived in a mud fort and, by several accounts, kept his money in his mattress because he didn’t trust banks.
Shakhbut’s moment in the sun came when drillers hit oil in 1958. All eyes were upon him. Was he going to use the money to raise his people up with dignity? Or was he going to squander it on trifles? As it turned out, Sheikh Shakhbut wasn’t going to do either. He feared the modern world and knew the ageless traditions of his land would be dashed by riches. He was considered stingy, rare for a Bedouin leader. Shakhbut wanted Abu Dhabi to keep its frontier edge and reject the soft clutches of the West.
In his defense, Sheikh Shakhbut understood the delicacy of the situation. His subjects had lived in primitive isolation for millennia. They weren’t ready for the Rolling Stones and miniskirts. Shakhbut wanted to ease his people into wealth and preserve their culture.
Shakhbut even rejected practical improvements, like roads and schools. For instance, by the end of his reign in 1966, he had only just started building a bridge to the mainland from Abu Dhabi island. Until the Maqta Bridge was finished, visitors had to wait until low tide to drive or wade across the channel. There was still no paved road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. People drove more than sixty miles along the beach and the salt flats, which was only possible when the sea was calm. 28
Shakhbut could be unreasonable. He sparked a diplomatic row by refusing to repay a loan from the British Bank of the Middle East. He
Much of the opposition focused on Hawley, the British political resident in Dubai. Hawley would attend a seemingly innocuous event, like a school sports day, and, instead of greeting him with the Union Jack, jeering students would wave flags of the United Arab Republic, Nasser’s short-lived union of Egypt and Syria. One morning Hawley woke to find the Union Jack missing from his residential compound. He found it floating in the creek. The British knew the end of their 152-year “colony-on-the-cheap” was near. The air smelled of rebellion, and many among Dubai’s prominent families became Nasser’s acolytes. 27
“It’s impossible to overstate Nasser’s effect,” says Anthony Harris, a British diplomat in Egypt and Sudan during Nasser’s time. Later, he became UAE ambassador. “It was the first time an Arab leader stood up to the West. He had this honeyed voice. People fell into trances when he spoke. The British were scared that Nasserism would sweep them out of the Arab world.”
Nasser’s revolutionaries might have ousted the British and carried off the Gulf sheikhs. But their timing was bad. Competing with independence fever were new opportunities to get rich. Abu Dhabi had oil, and the ruler suddenly had income to distribute. In Dubai, which had not yet struck oil, Sheikh Rashid understood that a boom was on the way, requiring construction and huge imports of goods. Without oil income, he bought off his opponents with business concessions. The families fomenting revolt were the first recipients. Christopher Davidson, an English scholar who has written extensively on the end of British rule, says that the largest Dubai merchant families whose names now adorn shopping malls and car dealerships were the most vehement Arab nationalists of the 1950s.
“The British advice was not to give blatant handouts, but to give prominent families exclusive trade licenses. If you make one family, say,the sole importer of Mercedes cars, you make them billionaires very quickly,” he says. The revolutionaries gave up their fight to get rich.
Perhaps nowhere begged for revolutionary change more than did Abu Dhabi before 1966. This sheikhdom had one of the world’s largest underground reservoirs of oil, and it was governed by Sheikh Shakhbut, a ruler who lived in a mud fort and, by several accounts, kept his money in his mattress because he didn’t trust banks.
Shakhbut’s moment in the sun came when drillers hit oil in 1958. All eyes were upon him. Was he going to use the money to raise his people up with dignity? Or was he going to squander it on trifles? As it turned out, Sheikh Shakhbut wasn’t going to do either. He feared the modern world and knew the ageless traditions of his land would be dashed by riches. He was considered stingy, rare for a Bedouin leader. Shakhbut wanted Abu Dhabi to keep its frontier edge and reject the soft clutches of the West.
In his defense, Sheikh Shakhbut understood the delicacy of the situation. His subjects had lived in primitive isolation for millennia. They weren’t ready for the Rolling Stones and miniskirts. Shakhbut wanted to ease his people into wealth and preserve their culture.
Shakhbut even rejected practical improvements, like roads and schools. For instance, by the end of his reign in 1966, he had only just started building a bridge to the mainland from Abu Dhabi island. Until the Maqta Bridge was finished, visitors had to wait until low tide to drive or wade across the channel. There was still no paved road between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. People drove more than sixty miles along the beach and the salt flats, which was only possible when the sea was calm. 28
Shakhbut could be unreasonable. He sparked a diplomatic row by refusing to repay a loan from the British Bank of the Middle East. He
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