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Middle East and North Africa the Arabs chronology 20th century
Middle East and North Africa: Arab Chronology--The 20th Century
Figure 1.--This scene was taken in Umm al Khashab, Jizan Province of Saudi Arabia during 1947. We note similar photographs in he arab worldduring the 19th century. Amazingly nothinf seems changed. In fact this scene could habe been taken two millnia earlier if photography existed at the time. The donkey/burro was man's first beast of burden, domestication dating back to 2800-2500 BC. Notice it was still common in Arabia during the 1940s. The photograph suggests some interesting element about poor people in the Arabian Peninsula at the time. You can see straw huts in the background. The classic Arab tunics are not so common. Many children and men wore only cloths wrapped around the waists. Almost all children and women and most men went barefoot. There are quite a number of people with African ancestors. Slavery still existed at thetime. Photographer: Wilfred Thesiger
Much of the Arab world was little changed in the early 19th century. This meant that the Arab heartland under various degrees of Ottoman control. Egypt, the most populous Arab country had become because of Suez a British protectorate. And here we see some technological and economic progress. But in the rural areas among the fellah, nothing had changed.
The eonomny was almost enturely agricultural and used the same methods developed in ancient times. This of course meant that productivity and living standards were the same as in earlier times. This was the general pattern throughout the Arab world, although generlly agriculture, the mainstay of the economy was not as productive as the Nile Valley. And some of the poorest areas were in the baren Arabian Peninsula. And not just Arabia and the Hejaz, but the various sultanates along the perifery of the Peninsula, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, AbuDaby, Dubayy, etc. The arab Revolt was the first major step toward independence. As a result of World War I, Ottoman control of the Arab world ended. The British and French seized the Ottoman areas. The British as in Egypt made little effort to make social reforms because this would have challenged Islam and thus disruptive. The French tried to some extent and had some impact in the cities, but very little in the countryside. After World War II the Arab countries gradually achieved independence. Only in Algeria was an actual war necessary to achieve independence. The general expectation in the region that independence and socialism would rapidly bring the kind of affluence common in the West. This did not occur. The basic pattern was that unless the countries sit on a pool of oil, they remained poor and backward. And even some countries with oil and gas resources remained basically poor and unproductive. Despite the most massive injection of capital in humn history, the Aarab world ewmains a sietfic dark hole and prouces abd exports nothing of significance besides oil and gas and petro-chemicals.
