Records of Saudi Arabia 1902

Records of the Emirates 1820–1960

ISBN: (13) 978-1-85207-230-8 Extent: 12 volumes, 8,250 pages, including 1 map box

Editor: Chief Editor P. Tuson, former head of Middle East archives within the British Library (Oriental & India Office Collections). Assistant editors: A. Burdett, E. Quick. Published: 1990
Paper: Printed on acid free paper
Binding: Library bindings with gilt finish

See sample pages: not available
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RESUMÉ
In these 8000 pages Archive Editions presents a key selection of facsimile original British government documents detailing the history and development of the United Arab Emirates from 1820 to modern times. The set includes a map box containing 10 maps dated between 1826 and 1956 and a set of the genealogical tables of the ruling families of the seven Emirates.
The collection offers historical evidence for the political, economic and social evolution of the seven Emirates. It includes internal and external frontier negotiations and questions of island sovereignty, constitutional and military developments; the Trucial States Council and the Trucial Oman Levies, municipal development, banking, medicine, air travel. Such records complete the historical background to the extraordinary evolution of the Emirate, from desert subsistence economies to modern city states.

DOCUMENTARY IMPORTANCE

The three Records of the Emirates titles combine to create a large collection which provides facsimile copies of the key documents reflecting the developments of the United Arab Emirates from 1820 to modern times. The collections offer historical evidence for the political, economic and social evolution of the seven Emirates. Up to 1947 material is drawn extensively from the India Office Collection of the British Library.
The files include numerous translations and Arabic originals of letters from Shaikhs. These sources are augmented by the reports of semi-diplomatic missions, maps and narrative descriptions of the Indian Navy´s qualified surveyors, who began charting the Gulf waters in 1820 and whose work provided a considerable body of new information on the Gulf in the mid-nineteenth century. Many of them have only been discovered relatively recently among the marine archives of the India Office and are now made available for the first time.
After 1947 archival material on the Emirates is drawn largely from the Public Records Office in London, in particular its Embassy and Consular archives and its Foreign Office archives. These documents continue the economic story through oil concession negotiations; prospecting rights and surveys and the first oil strike in Abu Dhabi in 1958. They include internal and external frontier negotiations and questions of island sovereignty, constitutional and military developments; the Trucial States Council and the Trucial Oman Levies, municipal development, banking, medicine, and air travel all up to 1965. In the years up to 1966–1971 the new subject of the unification of the Emirates arises and the process is covered in detail.
Such records complete the historical background to the extraordinary evolution of the Emirates, from desert subsistence economies to modern city states.

CONTENTS OUTLINE

Examples from the subject coverage:

The General Treaty of 1820
Wahhabi invasions 1800–1869 and disputes over Buraimi up to 1960
The Trucial system and British policy
Historical travellers´ descriptions
The ruling Shaikhs and regional affairs
Relations with Muscat, Qatar and Saudi Arabia
British Surveys and explorers
Turkish expansion in the Gulf
The ascendancy and rule of contemporary Shaikhs for example Sh. Zaid of Abu Dhabi
(ruled 1855–1909)
Island sovereignty
Oil exploration and concessions
The Buraimi oasis and the boundaries of Eastern Arabia
The Qawasim empire
The reform movement of Dubai
The movement towards independence
Federation: the Trucial State Council
Abu Dhabi/Qatar relations and dispute re ´Odaid peninsula, 1958; and re Halul, 1959, 1960
Summary of Delimited Trucial States frontiers by Foreign Office, 1958
Settlement agreed re Trucial States/Muscat frontier by rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ajman, 1959
Development of infrastructure and town planning

MAPS

01. Chart of part of the coast of Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Surveyed by J. M. Guy and G. B. Brucks, 1822-1825, and published by J. Horsburgh, 1826
02. Chart of the Gulf of Persia constructed from the trigonometrical surveys of G. B. Brucks, 1830. Published by J. Horsburgh, 1832
03. Sketch of route from Sharjah to Buraimi showing the relative positions of the Naim tribes of Buraimi and Hafit. Captain Atkins Hamerton, January 1840
04. Map of Maritime Arabia with the opposite coasts of Africa and Persia reduced in the Quarter Master General´s Office from an original map by Colonel T. Dickinson, Chief Engineer, 4 April 1843 [Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, Volume xxiv]
05. General outline map of the Persian Gulf showing submarine cables and the principal places [Persian Gulf and Oman resources and coastal defences, Admiralty, Intelligence Department, 1903
06. Map of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, compiled in the Foreign Office, Simla by Lieutenant F. F. Hunter for J. G. Lorimer´s Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, 1905-1908
07. Chart showing the pearl banks along the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf between Ras Tanura and Dubai [Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, Volume 1, part III, 1908]
08. Sketch map of disputed areas between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, showing Dubai claim of 1949. Political Agency, Sharjah, January 1949
09. Sketch map of various proposals for solution of Abu Dhabi-Dubai boundary dispute. Political Agency, Sharjah, April 1949
10. Sketch map showing territorial limits of various Trucial Coast shaikhdoms as recognised by Britain. After 1955 report by J. F. Walker, Political Agency, Dubai, 1956
11. Genealogical tables of ruling families [from: Historical summary of events in the Persian Gulf shaikdoms and the Sultanate of Oman, 1928-1953, Foreign Office, Confidential PG53]

Abu Dhabi
Dubai
Sharjah
Ras al-Khaimah
Ajman
Umm al-Qaiwain
Fujairah