Oil and Sovereignty (Paperback)

Ruediger Graf

ISBN 10: 1836953682 / ISBN 13: 9781836953685

Published by Berghahn Books, Oxford, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. In the decades that followed World War II, cheap and plentiful oil helped to fuel rapid economic growth, ensure political stability, and reinforce the legitimacy of liberal democracies. Yet waves of price increases and the use of the so-called oil weapon by a group of Arab oil-producing countries in the early 1970s demonstrated the Wests dependence on this vital resource and its vulnerability to economic volatility and political conflicts. Oil and Sovereignty analyzes the national and international strategies that American and European governments formulated to restructure the world of oil and deal with the eras disruptions. It shows how a variety of different actors combined diplomacy, knowledge creation, economic restructuring, and public relations in their attempts to impose stability and reassert national sovereignty. Oil and Sovereignty explores the national and international strategies formulated to deal with the first oil crises in 1973-1974, as steadily increasing prices and reduced production raised the specter of an uncertain future for many. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781836953685

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Oil and Sovereignty (Paperback)
• Publisher: Berghahn Books, Oxford
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1836953682
• ISBN 13: 9781836953685
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In the decades that followed World War II, cheap and plentiful oil helped to fuel rapid economic growth, ensure political stability, and reinforce the legitimacy of liberal democracies. Yet waves of price increases and the use of the so-called “oil weapon” by a group of Arab oil-producing countries in the early 1970s demonstrated the West’s dependence on this vital resource and its vulnerability to economic volatility and political conflicts. Oil and Sovereignty analyzes the national and international strategies that American and European governments formulated to restructure the world of oil and deal with the era’s disruptions. It shows how a variety of different actors combined diplomacy, knowledge creation, economic restructuring, and public relations in their attempts to impose stability and reassert national sovereignty.

About the Author

Rüdiger Graf heads the Research Department on Economic History at ZZF Potsdam. He received his doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin and has also taught at Ruhr-University, Bochum. He is the author of Die Zukunft der Weimarer Republik: Krisen und Zukunftsaneignungen in Deutschland 1918–1933 (2005) and co-author of Europäische Zeitgeschichte seit 1945 (2010), an introductory textbook on postwar European history.