A Pipeline Runs Through It

Petroleum has always been used by humans: as an adhesive by Neanderthals, as a waterproofing agent in Noah`s Ark and as a weapon during the Crusades. Its eventual extraction from the earth in vast quantities transformed light, heat and power. A Pipeline Runs Through It is a fresh, comprehensive in-depth look at the social, economic, political 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, political disenfranchisement, 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 industrialized oil region in the United States. Britain`s invasion of Upper Burma in 1885 was perhaps the first war fought, at least in part, for access to oil; 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.