Geopolitics

Between 1980 and 1985, a cooperation project between the Soviet Union and some Western European countries led to the construction of the so-called “Yamal” pipeline, the first that crossed the Iron Curtain and the one that marked the beginning of Western European dependence on Soviet gas.

This article focuses on select instances of the history of Greek petroleum geology, spanning over 150 years of -mostly failed- oil exploration attempts.

This article posits that the French conquest of Vietnam was undertook notably to appropriate its coal resources for the energy supply of the French Navy, and that French imperialism was in that case an ‘energy imperialism’.

This paper argues that efforts to gain secure access to and control over energy resources to fuel rapidly growing economies often rely on alternatives to energy imperialism.  In the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, rising economies utilized a variety of strategies to supply thei

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.