Sir Julian Fortay Walker CMG MBE (Arabic: جوليان فورت ووكر, romanized: Jūlīan Fūrti Wukar;7 May 1929 – 7 July 2018), also known by his initials J. F. Walker,[1] was a British Arabist, author, cartographer, land surveyor, former military officer and a retired diplomat who worked closely with Sheikh Rashid while serving as the last British representative to the Trucial States in Dubai for 11-months during the unification of the United Arab Emirates in 1971.

[2][3] He played an instrumental role in demarcating the present boundaries of the country's emirates as well as its borders with Oman during his capacity as an assistant political officer in the Trucial States and colonial Bahrain between the 1950s and 1960s.

[4][5] In his diplomatic career spanning almost 40 years, he served in various positions at places like Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Morocco, West Berlin, Northern Ireland, Lebanon and Norway.

Walker first arrived in Sharjah after graduating from Middle East Centre for Arab Studies during the reign of Sheikh Saqr bin Sultan al-Qasimi and then went to Dubai under the Political Agent Christopher Pirie-Gordon as an assistant political officer in December 1953 when it was part of the Trucial States during the reign of Sheikh Saeed bin Hasher al-Maktoum.

[16] Following the completion of Walker's field survey, J.P. Tripp, the Political Agent in Dubai, sent official letters during 1956 and 1957 to the Trucial Coast sheikhs informing them of their sheikhdom's boundaries.

[18] In February 1963, based on the information provided by Walker, the Research Department of the Foreign Office prepared the first official map of the internal boundaries in the Trucial States.

Walker argued in a July 1991 interview with a researcher in Durham, England that "the concepts of nation states, of territorial sovereignty, and of fixed linear frontiers are Western ones, which have been imposed on the traditional society of the Arabian Peninsula".

[16] The British government under prime minister Harold Wilson in January 1968 had publicly announced his administration's will to initiate the withdrawal and disengagement of the United Kingdom from the Persian Gulf by the end of 1971.

[21] In an interview given to a researcher in Durham, England on 19 July 1991,[16] Walker said: Dubai and Abu Dhabi were about to be alone, but the others were too small and if they became independent alone they will not stay long.

The British role was to get the Council of the rulers to be strong enough to provide an umbrella for them.Walker was also part of the negotiating team led by Sir William Luce where he tried to mediate for the disputed islands of Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs that were being claimed by Iran from Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah respectively.

He then went to Shemlan, Lebanon where served as the last director of the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies (MECAS) from 1977 to 1978, when the institution was closed down due to the ensuing Lebanese civil war.

After his retirement from diplomatic career in 1993, Walker would regularly visit the United Arab Emirates to attend seminars and conferences besides having sit-down with journalists and historians during his spare time.

[33] He sat down with the Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper, where he told that the Dubai had initially hoped that it could survive as an autonomous independent city-state under the protection of the Shah of Pahlavi Iran before Sheikh Zayed convinced Sheikh Rashid to form a union between the two emirates in order to avoid conflict among the northern emirates and avert meddling of other Gulf states in the region.

[34] In November 2010, he was a key speaker at a three-day seminar themed ‘The Memoirs of the Nation through Oral Narratives’ in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.