Colonial Burma was once a major center of world petroleum production in the early 20th Century. A notable group in the oilfields of Burma was the working-class American oil drillers, most of whom with ties to the oil regions of western Pennsylvania.
The Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo de Combustibles Líquidos y Lubricantes (ENCASO) was a company created in 1942 within Spain’s National Institute of Industry (INI) by Minister Juan Antonio Suanzes, in an effort to control the country’s strategic energy sector.
Since the discovery of oil in the Gulf, the military-industrial complex has expanded the scale and scope of capital accumulation.
In this special issue, we reflect on the relations between energy systems and imperialism via multiple expressions: the role of oil in international relations, the global economy, and the post-colonial world; the problem of waste created by the oil industry; the relations between capitalism and i
In the wake of a recent literature in international banking and financial history focused on the role of western commercial banks in placing the OPEC nations' assets with international borrowers, this article examines the role of leading Wall Street American banks in reflowing the investments of
Modern imperialism springs from the interaction of the geopolitical and economic logics. The international oil industry offers an ideal case study of this connection. The links between nation states and multinational oil companies have been close and mutually advantageous.
Anand Toprani’s, Oil and the Great Powers: Britain and Germany, 1914 to 1945 (Oxford University Press, 2019)
Petrodollars – the dollars accumulated by oil-producing countries as revenues for oil exports – are usually considered key to our understanding of the renewal and transformation of US power during the 1970s.
While energy use has appeared historically consequent for most of human history, it now seems energy non-use may determine our future. It is clear that the worst effects of climate change can only be averted if vast quantities of fossil fuels go unburnt.
This paper traces the history of oil being reined in by the British Raj, from the 1870s to the early 20th C. I argue that oil is not a self-evident object, but a category built by regimes of thought.