"Oil Men" represents a unique resource for the student of the challenges, both physical and political, of oil prospecting in a region with no infrastructure and no formal boundaries between local power bases. The book charts the slow and unexpected transformation of the emirates from poverty to undreamed-of wealth. Detailed coverage with extensive access to primary sources describes the frequently tortuous negotiations between oil companies, sheikhs and regional political agents, all of whom sought to protect their different vested interests. The author has had full access to company records which are quoted throughout, including progress reports, minutes of meetings, telegrams and other primary sources, which are collected in full in Volume 2.
""Oil Men"" represents a unique resource for the student of the challenges, both physical and political, of oil prospecting in a region with no infrastructure and no formal boundaries between local power bases. The book charts the slow and unexpected transformation of the emirates from poverty to undreamed-of wealth. Detailed coverage with extensive access to primary sources describes the frequently tortuous negotiations between oil companies, sheikhs and regional political agents, all of whom sought to protect their different vested interests. The author has had full access to company records.
The Trucial Coast Political Reports are a unique record of events, commented on by a small group of British men living in Sharjah and Dubai. This was in the years leading up to the commencement of oil exports from the desert of Abu Dhabi. These men regularly met to discuss and negotiate with the Rulers of the Trucial States - sometimes in a state of mutual incomprehension - the conditions under which the Company (Petroleum Development/Trucial Coast or PD/TC) would operate in their various territories. Boundaries and frontiers marked out in the desert were as much a novelty to the Bedouin as the notions of royalties and depreciation were to the Rulers. Men such as Bird, Codrai and Henderson learnt to understand, to some extent, the language and ways of the people of the Trucial Coast. They in turn had to contend with the ways of the legal, financial and business executives in London who tended to see affairs very differently. It is thanks to these Company Representatives living on the Trucial Coast that the bulk of the Diaries was saved. It is due to the efforts of the London executives that much other material was lost in the name of economy of storage space. These Reports record important events as well as the writer's observations. The editor has included some additional material from the PD/TC company files to present a more complete account.
From 17 April, 1900, to 6 June of that year, Pierre Loti travelled in a private capacity from Bushire on the Persian Gulf, northwards through Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan and Tehran, before returning via the Caspian Sea to Europe. This is the personal day-by-day account of his journey, the hardships of the mountainous terrain and the empty desert. Loti excels in his descriptions of the world around him: the sky, the mountains, the fertile plains, the deserted desert. His descriptions of the people he meets, their dress and manners are remarkable. Loti had come from India and on his way to the Gulf, he stopped off at Muscat and his account of this brief visit was published as 'En passant a Mascate' (Passing through Muscat). This is the first English translation of both texts.
The volume includes papers presented at the International KES Conference on Human Centred Intelligent Systems 2022 (KES HCIS 2022), held in Rhodes, Greece on June 20–22, 2022. This book highlights new trends and challenges in intelligent systems, which play an important part in the digital transformation of many areas of science and practice. It includes papers offering a deeper understanding of the human-centred perspective on artificial intelligence, of intelligent value co-creation, ethics, value-oriented digital models, transparency, and intelligent digital architectures and engineering to support digital services and intelligent systems, the transformation of structures in digital businesses and intelligent systems based on human practices, as well as the study of interaction and the co-adaptation of humans and systems.
From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm’s length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them—slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of “internal colonialism.” This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott’s work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.
Based on extensive field work and in-depth interviews in Kazakhstan, this book provides a comprehensive study of the issues of politics of oil and state-business relationships in Kazakhstan. It examines the ways in which the post-Soviet Kazakh regime has managed to sustain itself in power, and the regime maintenance techniques it has used in the process of establishing and upholding its position.
