If you read historical political discourses in France regarding the colonies, it's easy to see why the British were far better than the French. There was a lot of talk about bringing the light of civilizations to those poor colonies so, in general, they pretty much tore down the existing administrations and instead recreated their own administration from the top up.

The British strategy was far more pragmatic, they kept the local powers in place and played each of them against each other to maintain control over the colonies.

Of course, I'm generalizing but there's a clear difference of ideology that I do think explain the differences between the French and British when it came to managing their colonial empire.

It's basically just Abu Dhabi now, because they bailed out Dubai's housing sector on multiple occasion - in 2009 [0], 2019 [1], 2020 [2], and (down the grapevine) I've heard they might be providing an additional bailout to Dubai soon.

Furthermore, Saudi has started requiring companies that are operating in Saudi to operate a Saudi office, and won't give tenders to those who are managing the relationship remotely from Dubai now, so companies have started moving staff to Riyadh.

> Nevertheless, structurally different from the absolute monarchies around them

MbS is trying to remake KSA into an Abu Dhabi 2.0, as MbZ was his mentor

[0] - https://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/14/dubai.10.billion.bai...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1PU1LI/

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN22R23G/