Introduction

Abstract

Over the past twenty-five years the oil-producing countries of the Middle East have become of vast importance to the development not only of Europe and Africa but also of the Far East, particularly Japan. Their political and cultural development over this short space has been of a similar or even greater magnitude to that which the countries of Europe under-went over a much more extended period of time. Throughout the Middle East radical changes have occurred in the composition and distribution of population and society in the last few decades-changes which have a significance extending far beyond the regional and cultural context in which they are rooted.