The town of Dubai was an important port of call for foreign tradesmen (chiefly Indians), who settled in the town. Until the 1930s, the town was known for its pearl exports. The international trade which flowed from Dubai’s cosmopolitan contracts was the basis of it’s rapidly increasing prosperity. This gave the city an early start in development before the beginning of oil production in the late 1960s. Like the other towns along the coast, Dubai had been severely affected by the decline of the pearling industry, due to competition in the 1930s from Japanese cultured pearls, and by the drop in trade in the Second World War.
