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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Karl Ittmann, "Fuelling Empire: The British Imperial Oil Complex, 1886-1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Description: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, British companies used the resources of empire to create an imperial oil industry that controlled 20% of global oil reserves by 1939 and allowed for the movement of capital and labor between regions and companies. The imperial oil complex encompassed colonies—Burma and Trinidad—and dependent states-Iraq and Iraq. In both, the imperial state used its political and military power to support British oil interests. The oil complex drew on the resources of empire but also bolstered it with profits and tax revenues while a global set of oil sites supplied the British military and civi...