Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success
Dubai has a remarkable success story. Since its origins as a small fishing and pearling community, the emirate has steadily grown in strength to become the premier trading center of the Persian Gulf. It is also the locus of an exciting and innovative architectural revolution. Despite its lack of democratization and a genuine civil society, Dubai is now a booming metropolis of more than two million people, most of whom are expatriates benefiting from the city's increasingly diversified economy.
Following a detailed history, Christopher M. Davidson presents an in-depth study of Dubai's post-oil development strategies and their implementation during a period of near-complete political stability. Davidson addresses the probability of future problems as the need for sustained foreign direct investment encourages far-reaching socioeconomic reforms, many of which may affect the ideological, religious, and cultural legitimacy of the traditional monarchy. He also analyzes Dubai's awkward relationship with its federal partners in the United Arab Emirates and highlights some of the pitfalls of being the region's most successful free port-its attractiveness to international criminal fraternities, the economy of the global black market, and terrorist networks.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Davidson traces Dubai's rise from sleepy Gulf port to player on the world scene." -- Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times
Review
"This is the best study of Dubai that I have read and an important contribution to the still meager literature on the extraordinary formation that is the United Arab Emirates. Especially interesting is the book's discussion of the emirates' founding under British rule and the continuing influence of this imperial history on its politics and society; the imported character of its 'Arab' identity; and the regional context that informs everything from security concerns to demography." -- Faisal Devji, New School University, and author of Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity
"Davidson traces Dubai's rise from sleepy Gulf port to player on the world scene." -- Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times
"Mr. Davidson nicely lays out this flashy emirate's astonishing ascent from tiny fishing and pearling village to global hub." -- Stephen Kotkin, New York Times
About the Author
Christopher M. Davidson is a fellow of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University. He is a former assistant professor of political science at Sheikh Zayed University in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and the author of The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival.
Customer Reviews
Impeccable academic treatise on Dubai
This book is for the serious reader; it reads like an academic treatise--dense, magnificently researched with fascinating subject matter.
The first couple chapters succinctly cover the emirate's history. The following chapters detail the first free zone--Jebel Ali port--and the recent emergence of Dubai's diversified economy.
Chapter five concentrates of the distributed-wealth principle and Dubai's reliance on its rentier nature. The next chapter speaks of the paradoxes embedded in present day Dubai(the mix of East-West).
Dubai's relationships with the other emirates are explored in chapter seven, providing some really fascinating insights (who know alcohol was legal in Sharjah until Suadi helped bail the emirate out of its banking crisis in 1989?).
And the book concludes with a chapter on Dubai's naughty underbelly--gun running, terrorism, etc. Personally, I found it the least interesting chapter of the book.
One warning: if I hadn't lived in Dubai for a year before reading this book, it would not have resonated as strongly. Frankly, if you don't have a baseline understanding of Dubai, you may not get much out of it; the book is too dense and specific for a cursory understanding.
Very informative; some of the writing can be a little dry
As other reviewers have pointed out, this book is full of information and facts, and is a very good introduction to Dubai/UAE. However, I didn't give it a 5-star because some sections were written a little too matter-of-factly; I found myself having to put the book down for a couple of days before picking it back up again to finish it.
Nevertheless, it is a good read overall for anyone who's interested in knowing more about what Dubai has been through.
Historical Perspective not Future Prospectus
Despite the myriad of articles and sound bites about the latest achievements of Dubai, works dedicated to an in depth analysis of the city state have been extremely sparse. Search Dubai in Amazon and nearly all the books published were travel guides, with the exception of the book Dubai & Co.: Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States. There is a smattering of outdated literature about the UAE, but this does not little to illuminate the underlying trends and contradictions of the Emirate. Therefore Christopher M Davidson's academic work is particularly interesting and timely. Titled the vulnerability of success, this book has become the `go to' for a history of the Emirate and the ability to put the current achievements in context.
Upon starting the book, I immediately skipped from the 19th century tribal histories to the last chapter on the eponymous `Vulnerabilities of Success'. I was disappointed to find little that had not already been discussed in further detail elsewhere. For example, the subsection: `Present threat of Terror' merited only 2 pages, and the dynamics of the economy in the last few years seems largely neglected. For those looking for an up to date picture of Dubai politics and economics, even The Report Dubai 2007 contains more depth. But lacking any other reading material on Dubai, I flipped back to 19th century tribal politics.
Despite his title, Davidson's work on the history of Dubai is the core of this book, and where he certainly has the most to contribute. Through his narrative it becomes clear how far back the tradition of capitalism and immigration extend, exemplified in the anecdote that "Some of the earliest motorcars imported into Dubai were purchased for the expressed purpose of bringing Pakistanis across the mountains from Fujairah so they could work without the need for visas or time consuming paperwork." (91) Davidson also gives satisfactory answers to some of the most vexing questions about demographics, such as stating authoritatively that nationals account for only 4% of the population, and that 75% of the population is male. (168, 192) Finally, he manages to provide a complete picture of Dubai's role in the UAE and the gulf. One revelation is that the UAE actually convinced Saddam to leave power:
The UAE also tried to head off the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq by offering Saddam Hussein and his family sanctuary on the condition that he respected Bush's ultimatum and left Iraq. Although it would appear that Saddam actually accepted this proposal, only for the Arab League to later force the UAE to withdraw it on the grounds that it represented interference in a fellow member's internal affairs. (p. 168 from Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed in 2005)
Another is the recent integration of Dubai's forces into the UAE network, and the Unions attempts to cozy up to numerous western powers.
In sum, this is the reference book that lays the groundwork for further research on Dubai's history. While weak in analyzing emerging trends, Davidson's is valuable due to a thorough and interesting investigation into the context of the phenomenon that is Dubai.
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