This book is the product of two interests of which I became strongly aware in the late fifties and which have become more intense and absorbing over the years. The first was an interest in the economic conditions and development of the Arab World after the close of World War Two, when, one after another, the Arab countries freed themselves of foreign domination. With the exeception of Saudi Arabia and North Yemen, they had been under some form of Western colonial rule, but were now entering an exciting era of independence.