Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it, to repeat it, to repeat it

From an article on the history of the United Arab Emirates (aka Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah, and Fujairah; the UAE has six principal tribes spread throughout the federation: the Bani Yas, the Manasir, the al-Qasimi, the al-Ali, the Sharqi-yin and the Nu'aim): "Increasing British involvement in India beginning in the late eighteenth century quickened British interest in the gulf region as a means of protecting the sea routes to India. Before British intervention, the area was notorious for its pirates and slave trade and was called the Pirate Coast. The British defeated the Qawasim' in 1819, burning their ships and the town of Ras al Khaimah. This in turn led to the signing of agreements with Britain by the Qawasim' and other sheikhs which suppressed the piracy and slave trade in the gulf region. In 1820 a peace treaty with the British government was followed by other agreements such as the Perpetual Maritime Truce of May 1853. Under the Exclusive Agreement of March 1892, the Trucial sheikhs agreed not to enter into any agreements or correspondence with other powers, receive foreign agents, or cede, sell, or give any part of their territory to another government and to abstain from piracy. The strategic importance of the Persian Gulf became increasingly apparent as the oil industry developed in the twentieth century. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran all claimed some of the territory of the gulf states during the years between World War I and World War II, but Britain's firm resistance to these claims enabled the emirates to maintain their territorial integrity without resort to arms. When Britain announced that it would withdraw from the Persian Gulf, the Foreign Office assumed that the UAE would include the Trucial Coast as well as Qatar and Bahrain. Those later two emirates, however, refused to join the UAE and became independent states when Britain left in 1971.

Rico says nothing much has changed, other than a massive infusion of money after the discovery of oil; the primitive tribes of the region have bigger toys now, but no more notion of what to do with them than a hundred years ago...