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Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Naosuke Mukoyama, "Fueling Sovereignty: Colonial Oil and the Creation of Unlikely States" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Description: European colonialism was often driven by the pursuit of natural resources, and the resulting colonisation and decolonization processes have had a profound impact on the formation of the majority of sovereign states that exist today. But how exactly have natural resources influenced the creation of formerly colonised states? And would the world map of sovereign states look significantly different if not for these resources?These questions are at the heart of Fueling Sovereignty: Colonial Oil and the Creation of Unlikely States (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which focuses primarily on oil as the most significant natural resource of the mo...