Scholars of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula have long sought to understand the means by which modern states emerged and extended their reach across new national spaces in the twentieth century. Scholars have focused on oil concessions, boundary demarcation, the suppression of rebellions, and political negotiations between the British and local sheikhs who exercised nominal sovereignty over “hinterlands” such as the Hajjar Mountains in the northern Trucial States. Yet the emphasis on oil concessions and subsequent efforts to extend formal state power into the interior masks many other spatial transformations that had a greater impact on the lived experience of Trucial States citizens than the oil and elite politics documented in the literature. Using oral histories, Emirati memoirs, maps, and British archival sources, this presentation examines how late 1960s British officials and Trucial States citizens conceptualized and continually reformulated regional commercial networks in a period marked by rapid economic and political change. Starting in the early 1960s, the British sought to create a federation that would survive British military withdrawal and prevent Nasserists, Baathists, and other radicals from gaining a foothold in the Gulf. Central to the success of this projected federation was the extension of state power to the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah, an area long imagined as underdeveloped and ungoverned. To support this future political entity, the British formed the Trucial States Development Council (TSDC) to oversee the construction of modern infrastructure. The British and TSDC aimed to facilitate rapid movement of goods and people within the Trucial States, commercialize agriculture, and open up the hinterlands to resource exploitation. The construction of the region’s first paved roads between emirates was marked by high-profile struggles between the British, the Arab League, and eventually Saudi Arabia for control of the development process. British development experts documented the agricultural economy of an area ranging from Dubai to Ras al-Khaimah to Muscat, with the goal of introducing cash crops and new farming techniques. New jetties in Gulf port cities were built with rocks quarried in the Hajjar Mountains – an enterprise involving a German construction firm, Abu Dhabi money, and Baluchi labor, which local residents met with armed resistance. These historical episodes exemplify how the spatial integration of the northern Trucial States was a key part of the lower Gulf’s incorporation into the global capitalist system – a process not sufficiently explained by oil and elite politics.