Sinews of War and Trade. Laleh Khalili
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in the early 1960s, it was never considered to be enough for commercial exploitation; and in any case the port was already being developed as a hub of trade. The city of Dubai, like the other coastal emirates that formed the UAE in the early 1970s, was situated on sand spits with protected lagoons or creeks that allowed for safe anchorage, but which could not accommodate ships with deep draughts. These creeks and lagoons were also vulnerable to silting.15 The emirates were distinct in governance and economic specialisation, and if they had any relationship with one another, it was via maritime connections and trade.16 Dubai was a special case among them, as it had already been designated a free port in 1904.17 This and its tax-free, customs-free entrepôt status distinguished Dubai from other emirates on the coast. Further, its location and overseas ties (especially to Iran and India) developed through trade and smuggling proved durable and influential, shaping the patterns of commerce and parameters of rule. But what also differentiated Dubai from the other emirates was its ruling family’s always friendly relations with the British. By contrast, though Sharjah had provided an air outpost for Imperial Airways (a precursor to British Airways) since 1932 and an airbase for the Royal Air Force during World War II, its rulers were considered to have historically had ‘a general attitude of obstruction and opposition’ to Britain in ways the Al Maktum of Dubai had not.18
In the 1950s, as anticolonial movements unravelled the empire and nationalist sentiments roiled the tricontinents, the British began to consider a programme of economic development as a bulwark against the possibility of revolution. Given that the Gulf region was no longer simply a transit or trade outpost but the hub of oil production in the Eastern Hemisphere, colonial officials began to look to infrastructure projects that could encourage commerce and industry in the places where the British still held sway. There was also pressure from local rulers for means to enrich their purse and give their treasuries leverage over an increasingly vocal merchant class. As part of this push for development, in the early 1950s, the British political officers commissioned a British engineering firm, Halcrow, to conduct a study of the Sharjah and Dubai Creeks to gauge their suitability to house a new harbour. Halcrow issued two reports, one for each emirate. The reports, at around twenty pages each, briefly described the economic significance of the two harbours and the prevailing marine conditions that could affect their design (tides, winds, currents, and the like), and considered the difficulties and costs of their engineering and construction.
Halcrow’s report on Dubai described its commerce as ‘entrepôt trade in European and Far Eastern commodities which are imported by oceangoing vessels and distributed over a wide area by local craft’. However, the harbour itself was silting, and the
ships anchor about a mile offshore and transfer cargo to lighters having a loaded draught of five feet, which are consequently able to enter the harbour only during periods of relative high tide. Storms are liable to arise suddenly and the risk of damage to lighters and cargoes is reflected in the high insurance rates operating.19
The report added that fully laden ships of draughts deeper than six feet (two metres) were unable to leave the harbour, over the sandbar at its mouth.
Their report on Sharjah recognised the commercial significance of the town, which ‘was for many centuries the most prosperous centre of maritime activity in the region’, and acknowledged that unsuccessful attempts had been made in the past to ‘build a harbour in the shelter of the rocky point at Layya’.20 The report also pointed out that the silting of the Sharjah Creek had gone so far that most of Sharjah’s everyday supplies were now imported through Dubai. Halcrow’s report emphasised not only the degradation of Sharjah Creek but also its transport infrastructures, and indicated the other options the ruling family of the emirate was considering:
The Customs Wharf at Sharjah was built some twenty years ago to facilitate the landing of heavy materials when the airport was being constructed but because of the deterioration in the condition of the harbour referred to above, practically all the stores and plant required now for both service and civilian stations are imported through Dubai … The recent acquisition of new possessions on the Muscat coast is likely to give a new impetus to this [entrepôt] trade and efforts are being made to open up a trading centre based on the fine natural harbour of Khor Fakkan.21
Both reports contained a long litany of the problems that a construction project of this magnitude would face. These included
(a) Lack of raw materials. Only sand and stone are available naturally. Cement, timber, oil, fuel and fresh water in any quantity would have to be imported. (b) Lack of skilled labour. (c) Lack of adequate housing for the necessary [European] supervisory staff and cost of providing special housing. (d) All plant would have to be imported and freight charges would be heavy. (e) A comparatively small job of this nature would not be attractive to first class contracting firms unless they happened to be working within a reasonable distance from Dubai. Competition would therefore be limited and tendering would consequently not be keen.22
The report then indicated that these factors could increase the cost of construction of these harbours by several factors beyond the cost of similar projects in the UK. The reports estimated the cost of dredging the creek and construction of a harbour for Dubai at £388,000 (approximately £9.6 million in today’s value) and for Sharjah at a range between £250,000 and £825,000 (or between £6.2 and £20 million today).
Upon receiving Halcrow’s 1955 reports on the development of Sharjah and Dubai Harbours, the commercial secretary at the political residency in Bahrain, W.H. Adams, wrote in a memo that Sharjah’s ‘harbour facilities must continue to decline and in due course it will cease to exist as a “deep sea” port’. Commercially, however, Dubai would be encouraged to ‘survive and probably develop’. Financing options for dredging the Dubai Creek included a possible loan from the UK government ‘secured by a lien on Customs revenues’ or loans from construction companies or banks. Adams added that he preferred the first option, ‘as we could then dictate terms and the dictation of terms would seem to be most necessary’. The dictation of terms was deemed crucial for the British to create a ‘free-port’ facility for Sharjah in Dubai and allow Sharjah to decline as a port.23
In the event, Shaikh Rashid of Dubai attempted to raise some part of the necessary financing for the dredging project through a bond issue. The issue was taken up by both Dubai merchants (whose purchase of the bond secured a third of the necessary budget at £200,000). The rest of the cost was covered by a loan from the government of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti loan was guaranteed with the anticipated incomes from customs collection in Dubai. To improve the process of customs collection, the ruler of Bahrain seconded businessman Mahdi al-Tajir as the head of Dubai Customs.24 Mahdi al-Tajir went on to become the most powerful man in Dubai, after Shaikh Rashid himself, and acquired a vast estate in Scotland in 1975, becoming one of the richest men there. The Dubai Creek was eventually dredged by Overseas AST of Austria and Halcrow.25 Dredgers then expurgated the sand bank at the mouth of the creek and the harbour was deepened to eight feet.
The effect was to provide Dubai with a deep harbour – and enrich Shaikh Rashid’s own purse. The UAE historian Frauke Heard-Bey explains how the Dubai Creek dredging project
proved to be not only a costly convenience but was turned to good advantage because the spoil was deposited in a low-lying area nearby to create new building land. The sale of this land paid for the cost of dredging. The value of reclaimed land became an integral part in the assessment of all marine projects; no amount of dredging work seemed too large when the cost of that work was already debited against expected commercial value of the new building sites. The Ruler personally became the owner of such reclaimed