History of the United Arab Emirates
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The United Arab Emirates (the UAE or the Emirates) is a country in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, located on the southeastern coast of the Persian Gulf and the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Oman. The UAE has a history of human habitation, transmigration and trade spanning over 125,000 years. Pastoralist, nomadic Paleolithic and Neolithic communities thrived in the area until the 4th millennium BCE. The area was home to the Bronze Age Magan people, known to the Sumerians, who traded with the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley, Afghanistan and Bactria, and the Levant.
Through the three defined Iron Ages and the subsequent Hellenistic period, the area was an important coastal trading entrepôt. It was Islamised in the 7th century, when it again emerged as an important centre for trade, particularly around the ports of Julfar, Dibba and Khor Fakkan. Linked to the Eastern Arab trading network that centred around the Kingdom of Hormuz, these ports formed an important link in the Arab monopoly of trade between the East and Europe.
In the early years of the C16th, the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque invaded the area and disrupted the Arab Eastern trade networks, triggering a decline in the Arab dominance of the Eastern trade networks and a rise in regional conflict. Conflicts between the maritime communities of the Trucial Coast and the British led to the sacking of Ras Al Khaimah by British forces, which resulted in the first of several British treaties with the coastal rulers in 1820 (leading to the adoption of the name the Trucial States) and their status as a British semi-protectorate.
An early-1968 British decision to withdraw from its involvement in the Trucial States led to the decision to form a federation between two of the most influential Trucial rulers, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai, who shook hands on 18 February 1968 in a desert tent between their emirates. They met with the rulers of the other five Trucial States, together with Bahrain and Qatar, to discuss a federation on 25 February, and in a 27 February joint announcement named the intended federation The Federation of the Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates achieved independence from Britain on 2 December 1971. Six of the seven emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah) declared their union that day and the seventh, Ras Al Khaimah, joined the federation on 10 February 1972.