History Repeating Itself

This weekend I started reading Christopher Davidson's "The United Arab Emirates: A Study in Survival." Learning more about the cultural and economic history of the UAE illustrates how aspects of Dubai's economic openness and incorporation of foreign labor into the local economy have existed in other moments of the city's history. In addition, the example of pearling in the late 19th century reveals how even then, there existed an inclination to diversify the sources of income to the region as reliance on pearling alone (like oil in recent memory) was viewed as risky.