A Pipeline Runs Through It : The Story of Oil from Ancient Times to the First World War by Keith Fisher

Description A Pipeline Runs Through It is a fresh, in-depth look at the social, economic, and geopolitical forces involved in our transition to the modern oil age. It tells an extraordinary origin story, from the pre-industrial history of petroleum through to large-scale production in the mid-nineteenth century and the development of a dominant, fully-fledged oil industry by the early twentieth century. This was always a story of imperialist violence, economic exploitation and environmental destruction. The near total eradication of the Native Americans of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio has barely been mentioned as a precondition for the emergence of the first oil region in the United States. The growth of Royal Dutch-Shell involved the genocidal subjugation of people of the Dutch East Indies and the exploitation of oil in the Middle East arose seamlessly out of Britain’s prior political and military interventions in the region. Finally, in an entirely new analysis, the book shows how the British navy’s increasingly desperate dependence on vulnerable foreign sources of oil may have been a catalytic ingredient in the outbreak of the First World War. The rise of oil has shaped the modern world, and this is the book to understand it. Customers Also Liked Related products The Collaborators: Three Stories of Deception and Survival in World War II Flush It Down : The Story of Sewers Through Time by Rob Flowers The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World Through the Women Who Shaped It by Daisy Dunn To End All Wars: How the First World War Divided Britain by Adam Hochschild Reviews