History of The United Arab Emirates - The Rise and Fall of The Pearling Industry

The Rise and Fall of The Pearling Industry

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pearling industry thrived in the relative calm at sea, providing both income and employment to the people of the Persian Gulf. It began to become a good economic resource for the local people. The First World War had a severe impact on the pearl fishery, but it was the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, coupled with the Japanese invention of the cultured pearl, that all but destroyed it. The industry eventually faded away shortly after the Second World War, when the newly independent Government of India imposed heavy taxation on pearls imported from the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The decline of pearling resulted in a very difficult era, with little opportunity to build any infrastructure.

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