Al-Thani Family's Qatar History Revisited: Part 4

As the 2017 World Almanac and Book of Facts noted, "military ties" of the U.S. government with the Al-Thani absolute monarchical government in Qatar "have been expanding" and "Camp As-Sayliyah, a base near Doha" in Qatar, "served as a command center for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, March 2003." In addition, "a 10-year defense cooperation agreement" between the Democratic Obama administration and the Al-Thani regime was signed on December 10, 2013. Yet most people in the United States know little about the history of Qatar during the last few hundred years. For example:   

By the 1940s, the Al-Thani family in Qatar no longer was able to enrich itself by exporting pearls to foreign markets. As Rosemarie Said Zahlan's book The Creation of Qatar observed:

"The pearling...trade was dealt a crippling blow, from which it never recovered, in the 1930s. The international economic depression of 1929, which apparently decreased the demand for luxury items, coincided with introduction into world markets of the Japanese cultured pearl..."

But by granting UK imperialism's Anglo-Persian Oil Company [APOC] a concession in 1935 to exploit and profit from Qatar's then-undeveloped oil resources, the Al-Thani family member who held Qatar's emir position between  1913 and 1948, Abdullah Al-Thani, was able to more greatly enrich the Al-Thani family; as oil began to be discovered and then exported from Qatar after World War II. As Georgia State University Professor of History Allen Fromherz noted in Qatar: A Modern History, by the end of World War II: 

"The entire population of Qatar had fallen to 16,000. Entire villages that had survived for centuries were depopulated as tribes emigrated en masse to neighboring, more prosperous shores. In 1944 only 6,000 fishermen were engaged in the pearl harvest as opposed to 60,000 some 20 years before...

"...The 1916 treaty with Abdullah allowed the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [APOC] and the British government to make exclusive claims to potential oil deposits in Qatar. As the pearl industry declined in the 1920s Sheikh Abdullah...was eager to sign an oil agreement with APOC that would allow him to consolidate his position...By 1935...he finally signed the oil concession with APOC...Abdullah received a large payment of 400,000 Indian rupees upon signature of the agreement, with a further 150,000 to be paid to him personally each year. This amount was increased to $300,000 Indian rupees after the sixth year...A political agreement was also signed, securing British control over oil operations in Qatar and increasing British interference in Qatar's internal affairs. Shortly after the concession was signed by APOC, the company was transformed into an affiliate of the Iraq Petroleum Company, similarly controlled by the British, and renamed Petroleum Development Qatar Ltd., the predecessor to Qatar Petroleum..."

(end of part 4)