This study considers historical information on the rivalries, competitions, and allegiances within and among the ruling families of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in some detail in the effort to establish that a particular culture of political leadership was constructed over the last 200 some years. Rugh marches confidently through well-trodden historical sources and has produced a concise and focused narrative account for each of the ruling families of the seven emirates that will be greatly appreciated by those embarking on a study of the country.

It is rare that the lesser emirates, small and without oil revenues, are the focus of attention, and Rugh's contribution is most welcome. So, too, is the effort to include women in the political narrative although this is rather predictably impossible to do because one cannot but assume the motives behind marriages; sadly, Emirati women have been left out of the historical narratives for so long that there is little real hope now of establishing their influence. For those familiar with the history of the country, this book is perhaps somewhat redundant because Rugh does not stray from the canonical historical texts, nor does she explore the contemporary political culture as much as one might anticipate from the title of the book. The final chapter does include a discussion of the realignment of power in Abu Dhabi after the death of Shaykh Zayed, along with a novel narrative that is offered without a source and therefore represents an arguable perspective on the reordering of succession in Ras Al Khaimah. However, there is little on fraternal succession in Dubai or, indeed, the political capital of Shaykh Mohammad bin Rashid.

Although Rugh does frequently concede throughout her study that the British had much more influence in the internal affairs of the Trucial States than they probably intended or publically acknowledge, she proceeds as if the internal workings of the ruling families were somehow intractable in the face of gunboats, destroyed fleets, threats of intervention, and duplicitous dealings on the part of generations of British officers, political agents, and residents. In her bibliography Rugh lists several sources that make a very forceful case for the fact that the British hegemony extended deep into the political fabric and, indeed, affected the concentration of power in particular groups within families, thus concretizing rule across the region long before oil revenues came into play. She does not discuss these perspectives but includes such comments as “the second significant British action was to recognize a limited number of local shaikhs whom they concluded were capable of honouring agreements” without questioning how the British made that determination (p. 11). In a similar vein, Rugh apparently accepts that piracy in the Gulf was as the British described it back in the early 18th century (and I suppose if anyone knew piracy firsthand then it was the British) and therefore proceeds with the destruction of the Qawasim coastal cities and their Gulf trade as if neither of those is historically contentious.

There is of course very little written history on the region after 1820 other than the documents and records produced by the British as a part of their role as “protector,” so it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct an emic perspective. Although we may never know how the “natives” in the Trucial States perceived the motives of their British protectors or how they sought to maneuver around British interference in their political dealings, we should not make the mistake of assuming that the British military, Colonial and Foreign Office career bureaucrats, and visitors were somehow objective or necessarily sensitive to the society. Rugh seems content to believe that “the resident officers tried to record the actions of the rulers as accurately as possible even when they themselves were not certain of what they were observing” (p. x). Considering that some British officials described the Arabs of the Gulf Coast as “missing links,” we would be prudent not to make such an assumption.

Probably the most straightforward way to handle documents, information, and anecdotes that were produced within and as a part of a hegemonic relationship is to consistently and faithfully identify the source, thus permitting the reader to judge the credibility of the information and, possibly, to what end it was originally produced. Sadly, Rugh does not do this. Indeed, in her long chapters on the Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, her main historical source is Hawley, whom she cites with no mention of the fact that he was the British political agent from 1958 to 1961. Another troubling detail is her extensive use of an unpublished manuscript as the source of what might be considered rather contentious remarks about the tribes of Abu Dhabi.

Sources and attributions are a flaw that runs throughout the book. Rugh is an anthropologist, yet she has chosen not to conform to commonplace, indeed expected, norms, such as making explicit the conditions under which research was accomplished and considering the impact of relationships, imbalances of power, and the other diverse factors that shape and influence anthropological research—whether it be in the field or in the archive or both. Indeed, it is expected for anthropologists to situate themselves in their inquiry, and Rugh does not do this other than to mention in passing the years she has spent in the Middle East. She makes no note of the fact that she is the wife of a State Department official posted to the UAE and indeed she lived in Abu Dhabi. An uncharitable person might assume that her access to the ruling families of the country was made possible by her official status and not by virtue of an interview schedule and a handful of informed consent forms.

Rugh has also chosen to truncate names, omitting al, bin, and bint. Quite without explanation, she has changed the spelling of Shaykh Zayed to Zaid, apparently without concern for the fact that Emiratis use these terms and Zayed is displayed throughout the country. This is not a linguistic-purist's criticism; it is just common sense to use what is accepted and already in print. The Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi, where Rugh did some of her research, is misidentified throughout the book as the Documentation Center. A detail perhaps—but accuracy does count.