Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization

Global and International History

by Christopher R.W. Dietrich

"Marx once observed that ideas can have a material force in history. Dietrich's new book presents powerful evidence in support of that proposition. He shows how a set of ideas about a postcolonial state's right to control its natural resources, oil in particular, transformed the world economy between the late 1940s and the early 1970s.... The originality of the research, especially the excavation of the pivotal role played by transnational oil elites, makes the book an important resource for scholars of international history and international political economy. Indeed, no concise, thorough, and readable narrative of this period in oil history has been available until the publication of this book."  -Journal of Interdisciplinary History  Through innovative and expansive research, Oil Revolution analyzes the tensions faced and networks created by anti-colonial oil elites during the age of decolonization following World War II. This new community of elites stretched across Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Algeria, and Libya. First through their western educations and then in the United Nations, the Arab League, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, these elites transformed the global oil industry. Their transnational work began in the early 1950s and culminated in the 1973-4 energy crisis and in the 1974 declaration of a New International Economic Order in the United Nations. Christopher R. W. Dietrich examines how these elites brokered and balanced their ambitions via access to oil, the most important natural resource of the modern era.

Genres: History

366 pages, Paperback

Published June 16, 2017

Reviews

[Matias Andrade]

A profoundly interesting book, and one that seems to ask all the right questions. It examines the international context for the 1970s fuel crisis, the rise of OPEC, the struggle for the creation of a New International Economic Order to renegotiate commodity prices, and the ultimate failure of this idea. It posits that this context is what led to substantial rise in private debt (as opposed to FDI or aid) being extended by American and European banks.

[Bailey]

The best book abt oil EVER