The History Book Club discussion

This thread is focused on United Arab Emirates

Since we are doing the Middle Eastern challenge; setting up one thread per Middle Eastern country is a good idea.

Dubai Dreams

by Raymond Barrett

Synopsis:

Dubai has become the watchword for all things new, glittering and very bling - a billionaire's dreamworld and a haven for international expatriates promising a fantasy land of tax-free fun, sun and sin. In less than a generation, this small city-state on the Arabian Gulf has been transformed from a sleepy smuggler's cove to a global financial and entertainment hub, home to a number of world records, including the world's tallest building, the largest man-made island and the biggest shopping mall.

But what is life really like for the people who live and work in the city of Dubai, beyond the towering skyscrapers, luxury resorts and opulent mansions? Rather than just desert Sheikhs and designer-clad Emiratis, Raymond Barrett also encounters a dizzy melange of expatriates - Iranians, Ethiopians, Indians, Afghans, British and Chinese - all living their own version of the Dubai Dream.

Behind the hyperbole and marketing spin, what are the real stories the city has to tell? From seven-star hotels to immigrant labour camps, from Sunni mosques to Hindu temples and from the courthouse to a back-alley speakeasy, Barrett draws a fascinating picture of the brave new world emerging from these desert sands. He reveals the hidden side of this playboy paradise and considers whether Dubai is a doomed Plastic Arabia or an authentic 21st-century success story.

City of Gold: Dubai and the Dream of Capitalism

by Jim Krane

Synopsis:

The city of Dubai, one of the seven United Arab Emirates, is everything the Arab world isn’t: a freewheeling capitalist oasis where the market rules and history is swept aside. Until the credit crunch knocked it flat,

Dubai was the fastest-growing city in the world, with a roaring economy that outpaced China’s while luring more tourists than all of India.

It’s one of the world’s safest places, a stone’s throw from its most dangerous.

In City of Gold, Jim Krane, who reported for the AP from Dubai, brings us a boots-on-the-ground look at this fascinating place by walking its streets, talking to its business titans, its prostitutes, and the hard-bitten men who built its fanciful skyline.

He delves into the city’s history, paints an intimate portrait of the ruling Maktoum family, and ponders where the city is headed. Dubai literally came out of nowhere. It was a poor and dusty village in the 1960s.

Now it’s been transformed into the quintessential metropolis of the future through the vision of clever sheikhs, Western capitalists, and a river of investor money that poured in from around the globe.

What has emerged is a tolerant and cosmopolitan city awash in architectural landmarks, luxury resorts, and Disnified kitsch. It’s at once home to America’s most prestigious companies and universities and a magnet for the Middle East’s intelligentsia.

Dubai’s dream of capitalism has also created a deeply stratified city that is one of the world’s worst polluters. Wild growth has clogged its streets and left its citizens a tiny minority in a sea of foreigners.

Jim Krane considers all of this and casts a critical eye on the toll that the global economic downturn has taken on a place that many tout as a blueprint for a more stable Middle East.

While many think Dubai’s glory days have passed, insiders like Jim Krane who got to know the city and its creators firsthand realize there’s much more to come in the City of Gold, a place that, in just a few years, has made itself known to nearly every person on earth.

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

by Michael Korda (no photo)

Synopsis:

T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) first won fame for his writings and his participation in the British-sponsored Arab Revolt of WWI, but the adventurer known even in his day as "Lawrence of Arabia" is remembered today mostly as the subject of the 1962 film masterpiece based on his life. This splendid page-turner revitalizes this protean, enigmatic adventurer. That this colorful British scholar/Middle East warrior deserves a better fate is demonstrated amply in Michael Kordas' authoritative 784-page biography. Exciting, well-written, and relevant.

A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in Abu Dhabi, the World's Richest City

by Jo Tatchell

Synopsis

Arabia in the 1960s -- still a land of desert, nomadic tribes, falcons and gazelles. And Abu Dhabi, perched on the Gulf Coast, was a poor fishing community. Barely forty years on, it is the richest city on earth, with major stakes in Western economies. And if the extraordinarily ambitious plans for the capital of the United Arab Emirates succeed, its future impact will be global. Jo Tatchell's family arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1974 when there were only a few thousand inhabitants. She left as a young adult in the nineties, choosing personal freedom over a life of comfort and ease. But in recent years, as Abu Dhabi has become ever more significant on the world stage, she has returned to get behind the headlines and see how the city is changing for herself. In this illuminating portrait, she shows Abu Dhabi past and present through the eyes of its people -- from sheikhs to Indian immigrants, housewives to ex-pats -- as well as her own. Tales of traditional Bedu hospitality and of expeditions into the desert mingle with accounts of hair-raising decadence and double standards, as she reveals a society and culture almost derailed by sudden, extreme wealth. And yet, as she discovers, Abu Dhabi is about to change again. Its rulers have a grand vision of a cultural bridge between Islam and the West, which might just transform our world.

Thanks Jerome.

Unbelievable.

This looks like an interesting one since I have been there.

That is a shame because they can be so dangerous - on the other hand they probably need a lot of power and probably their demand for electricity, air conditioning, refrigeration powered by something must be huge for that region.

Buraimi: The Struggle for Power, Influence and Oil in Arabia

by Michael Quentin Morton

Synopsis:

Buraimi is an oasis in an otherwise bleak desert on the border between Oman and the UAE. In the early twentieth century, it shot to notoriety as oil brought the world's attention to this corner of the Arabian Peninsula, and the ensuing battle over energy resources between regional and global superpowers began. In this lively account, Michael Quentin Morton tells the story of how the power of oil and the conflicting interests of the declining British Empire and the United States all came to a head with the conflict between Great Britain and Saudi Arabia, shaping the very future of the Gulf states.

The seeds of conflict over Buraimi were sown during the oil negotiations of 1933 in Jedda, where the international oil companies vied for control of the future industry in the Arabian Peninsula. As a result of lengthy discussions, including the efforts of men such as St John Philby and Ibn Saud himself, the Saudis granted an oil concession for Eastern Arabia without precisely defining the geographical limits of the area to be conceded. Matters came to a head in 1949 when Saudi Arabia made claim to the territory, and Great Britain, acting on behalf of Oman and Abu Dhabi, challenged the actions of the Saudis. Attempts at arbitration failed, and only one year before Britain's defeat over the Suez Canal, Britain expelled Saudi Arabia from the oasis. In the wake of Britain's withdrawal 'East of Suez' in the early 1970s, the dispute was apparently solved between Saudi Arabia and the UAE. But whilst the controversy dominated Anglo-Saudi relations for more than 30 years, it still casts its shadow across the Gulf today, threatening to expose the fragility of the West's ever-present dependency on the region for its supply of oil.

Morton brings a range of historical figures to life, from the American oilmen arriving in steamy Jedda in the 1930s, to the rival sheikhs of Buraimi itself competing for power, wealth and allegiances as well as the great players in world politics: Churchill, Truman and Ibn Saud. This entertaining and thoroughly researched book is both a story of a decisive conflict in the history of Middle East politics and also of the great changes that the discovery of oil brought to this previously desolate land.

Thanks Jerome

Thanks Teri

An upcoming book:
Release date: March 15, 2016

Keepers of the Golden Shore: A History of the United Arab Emirates

by Michael Quentin Morton

Synopsis:

For those who come to the United Arab Emirates, staying in luxurious air-conditioned hotels and visiting ultra-modern shopping malls, the country appears an enigma, a glass and concrete fabrication that seems to have sprung from the desert overnight. Keepers of the Golden Shore looks behind the glossy facade, tracing the history of the region from its beginnings in nomadic tribes to the affluent society of today, casting a new and revealing light on a much-misunderstood land.

On 2 December 1971, the United Arab Emirates was born; Great Britain signed a Treaty of Friendship making the end of its presence in the region. Many thought it was doomed to fail, and yet nothing can be taken for granted in this land of mirages and hidden treasures. Across the spread of its deserts, mountains, islands and seas, the UAE has a rich and diverse history.From ancient people who emerged from the desert to settle there, through many invasions and wars, myths of piracy and the allure of pearls, to the arrival of oilmen drilling beneath the dunes in the stifling heat, Keepers of the Golden Shore tells the extraordinary story of how the Emirates evolved from an impoverished tribal society to become one of the richest countries on Earth today.

Thanks Teri for all of the wonderful adds in the Middle Eastern threads.

The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics and Policy-Making

by Kristian Ulrichsen

Synopsis

Led by Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the UAE has become deeply embedded in the contemporary system of international power, politics, and policy-making. Only an independent state since 1971, the seven emirates that constitute the UAE represent not only the most successful Arab federal experiment but also the most durable. However, the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath underscored the continuing imbalance between Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the five northern emirates. Meanwhile, the post-2011 security crackdown revealed the acute sensitivity of officials in Abu Dhabi to social inequalities and economic disparities across the federation.

The United Arab Emirates: Power, Politics, and Policymaking charts the various processes of state formation and political and economic development that have enabled the UAE to emerge as a significant regional power and major player in the post Arab Spring reordering of Middle East and North African Politics, as well as the closest partner of the US in military and security affairs in the region. It also explores the seamier underside of that growth in terms of the condition of migrant workers, recent interventions in Libya and Yemen, and, latterly, one of the highest rates of political prisoners per capita in the world. The book concludes with a discussion of the likely policy challenges that the UAE will face in coming years, especially as it moves towards its fiftieth anniversary in 2021.

Providing a comprehensive and accessible assessment of the UAE, this book will be a vital resource for students and scholars of International Relations and Middle East Studies, as well as non-specialists with an interest in the United Arab Emirates and its global position.

Thank you for the adds.

An upcoming book:
Release date: October 31, 2019

The End of Empire in the Gulf: From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates

by Tancred Bradshaw (no photo)

Synopsis:

With the end of the British Raj in 1947, the Foreign Office replaced the Government of India as the department responsible for the Persian Gulf, and would proceed to manage relations with the Trucial States (now the United Arab Emirates, UAE) until British withdrawal in 1971. This work is a comprehensive history of British policy in the region during that period, situated for the first time in its broad historical and political context.

Tancred Bradshaw – an academic historian with extensive experience in the region – sheds light onto the discovery of oil in Abu Dhabi in the 1950s, Foreign Office attempts to instigate a long-term development policy in the region, the slow end of the British Empire, the origins of the UAE and – most importantly – the British legacy in this geopolitically crucial region today. The book relies on 40,000 pages of archival material, much of it previously unused, and will be of interest to Imperial historians, as well as anyone working on the history and politics of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.