Reminder - CFP: 'Energy Imperialism' Special issue of the Journal of Energy History / Revue d’histoire de l’énergie (JEHRHE)

“Energy Imperialism”

Special issue

Journal of Energy History / Revue d’histoire de l’énergie (JEHRHE)

Co-editors:

Marta Musso (King’s College London)

Guillemette Crouzet (Warwick University)

Call for papers for a special journal issue: Energy Imperialism. Resources, power and environment (19th-20th Cent.)

The 19th Cent. was the Age of Coal; the 20th Cent. was the Age of Oil. The intense exploitation of these resources marked the shift towards a new phase of the history of the Anthropocene. Indeed, in the 19th and 20th Cent., energy resources became an important non-human agent shaping Western Empires and relations between the West and the “global South”. Oil imperialism and fossil capitalism are concepts used by the historiography to understand colonialism, post-colonialism, and imperialism in a longue durée perspective.

The connection between mankind and energy is a constant theme throughout history, and the relations between energy and power structures one of the most popular in academic literature on energy in social sciences. A vast historiography has explored the links between resources, commodities and empire, highlighting that the quest for oil and coal shaped the expansion of the British Empire and the emergence of the Anglosphere in the 19th Cent.

This has been particularly the case after World War II, when oil replaced coal as the main world energy source. The oil industry developed at a time of global-scale changes that overturned the world’s political and economic assets: the two World Wars, the fall of the empires, the cold war and finally the end of the bipolar world. American Imperialism in the 20th Cent. cannot be understood without taking into account the development of the American oil industry and global oil politics – not only in the military and economic aspects of the oil industry, but its social and cultural ones.

Since the late 1960s, oil politics and geopolitics became a genre on its own in history and political sciences. The mythology of oil is vast and pervasive; however, few studies have tackled the problem of the relations between energy policies and imperialism in a long-term perspective; even fewer have tackled the problem of “oil imperialism” from a wider and comparative perspective: in other words, is it possible to talk about “energy imperialism”?

This Special Issue seeks to explore the relations between energy dependence and the socio-technical, economic, political, cultural structures that cause energy dependence. It aims to expand the notion of “oil imperialism” by putting it into comparison with the different structures created by other energy sources.

The issue will reflect on the sourcing of energy as an asymmetric power relation; on the connections between energy, the technology that distributes it, and the the actors who consume it. Furthermore, it seeks to reflect on the notion of control over energy sources, particularly in a global perspective, therefore rethinking the relations between the West and the global South in a postcolonial era. The oil paradigm will be extended to other sources of energy throughout history, without limits in time or space. We seek to study energy and imperialism in a broader conversation between environmental history, history of technology, colonial and imperial history and development studies.

This call for paper is centred around the following questions:

- What does it mean to be energy dependent?

- What does it mean to “control” an energy source?

-How have energy imperialism and fossil fuel capitalism shaped the Anthropocene?

- Does oil (and/or gas) represent an exception in the history of energy, or can we apply the category of “imperialism” to other energy sources?

- What is the role of other energy sources (nuclear, renewables, coal…) in the narrative on oil imperialism?

- Are distributed/renewable energy infrastructures (eg, solar panel) less “imperialistic” than centralised/finite structures?

- What is the role of patents and proprietary technology in energy power relations?

- Is there a relation between labour in the energy industry and imperialism?

The geographical and historical focus of this issue aims to be broad in scale, with no limit in the period, area, or scale analysed (from local communities to the global), in order to promote a comparative analysis that may yield a new approach to the traditional “oil imperialism” narrative that dominated the 20th Cent.

Articles can be submitted in English or in French. The deadline to send the abstract (accompanied by a short CV of the author or authors) is 15th September 2018, with a deadline for full articles in November 2018

Contact information:

Marta Musso, King’s College London (marta.musso@kcl.ac.uk)

Guillemette Crouzet, Warwick University (g.crouzet@warwick.ac.uk)

Léonard Laborie (comite.histoire.electricite@gmail.com)

Journal of Energy History / Revue d’histoire de l’énergie

The Journal of Energy History / Revue d’histoire de l’énergie (JEHRHE) is the first journal in French- or English-speaking academia dedicated to the study of the history of energy. At the heart of human history, concerns about energy have increasingly become global, complex, and pressing. They merit rigorous investigation and study, including historical inquiry. The history of energy helps us understand the history of human society and sheds light on contemporary challenges.

JEHRHE seeks to go beyond studies that treat different sources and forms of energy in isolation. The journal creates new opportunities for scholarship and publication in which the full potential of historical research can be realized by comparing and contrasting different forms of energy produced and consumed in their social, political, economic, technological, and cultural contexts.

Although JEHRHE focuses on the period from the 18th century to the present—generally understood as the “modern” era in energy history—it will nonetheless consider all contributions, regardless of their period of focus. The journal is also open to a range of disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) approaches that share a commitment to investigating historical processes and change over time.

JEHRHE will be published online, open access, two volumes per year. Articles in French and English will be accepted and subject to peer view by two scholars. The journal is overseen by an international editorial board. Its readership is primarily academic, but diverse publishing formats, particularly “Out of the Box,” are intended to reach a wider audience and thus offer valuable opportunities to share research with the general public.

Selected bibliography:

Adelman, M. (2008) Genie out of the Bottle: World Oil since 1970 (Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press).

Barry, A. (2013) Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline 1 edition. (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell).

Basosi, D. (2012) Finanza e petrolio. Gli Stati Uniti, l’oro nero e l’economia politica internazionale (Venezia: La Toletta).

Bebbington, A. and Bury, J. (2013) Subterranean Struggles: New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America (University of Texas Press).

Beltran, A. (ed.) (2010) A Comparative History of National Oil Companies New edition edition. (Bruxelles ; New York: P.I.E-Peter Lang S.A., Éditions Scientifiques Internationales).

Beltran, A.(ed.) (2011) Oil producing countries and oil companies: from the XIXth century to the XXIst century (Bruxelles, Belgique: P.I.E. Peter Lang,).

Bonneuil, C. and Fressoz, J.-B. (2017) The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us (Verso Books) Available online at: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2388-the-shock-of-the-anthropocene (accessed 18 May 2018).

Cantoni, R. (2017) Oil Exploration, Diplomacy, and Security in the Early Cold War: The Enemy Underground 1 edition. (New York: Routledge).

Cardoso, F. H. and Faletto, E. (1979) Dependency and Development in Latin America (Dependencia Y Desarrollo en América Latina, Engl.) (Berkeley: University of California Press).

Clark, J. G. (1991) Political Economy of World Energy: A Twentieth-Century Perspective (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press Enduring Editions).

Dietrich, C. R. W. (2017a) Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (Cambridge University Press) Available online at: /core/books/oil-revolution/18BC5F6167898A67BF843D015954F25E (accessed 18 May 2018).

Dietrich, C. R. W. (2017b) Oil Revolution: Anticolonial Elites, Sovereign Rights, and the Economic Culture of Decolonization (Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press).

Garavini, G. (2012) After empires: European integration, decolonization, and the challenge from the global south, 1957-1985 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,).

Gfeller, A. É. (2014) Building a European Identity: France, the United States, and the Oil Shock, 1973-74 (New York: Berghahn Books).

Gordon, T. and Webber, J. R. (2008) Imperialism and Resistance: Canadian mining companies in Latin America. Third World Quarterly, 29(1), 63–87.

Hecht, G. (2012) Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press) Available online at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhk5k (accessed 24 May 2018).

Hughes, L. (2014) Globalizing Oil: Firms and Oil Market Governance in France, Japan, and the United States (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press).

Hultman, N. E. (2011) The political economy of nuclear energy. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2(3), 397–411.

Isaacman, A. F. and Isaacman, B. (2013) Dams, displacement, and the delusion of development : Cahora Bassa and its legacies in Mozambique, 1965/2007 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press).

Kander, A., Malanima, P., and Warde, P. (2014) Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press).

Lucas, N. J. D. (1977) Energy and the European Communities (London: Europa Publications Ltd).

Marcel, V. and Mitchell, J. V. (2006) Oil titans: national oil companies in the Middle East (London :Washington, D.C.: Chatham House ;Brookings Institution Press,).

Maugeri, L. (2006) The age of oil (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Publishing Group).

Mitchell, T. (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London ; New York: Verso).

Myllyntaus, T. (1997) Electrical Imperialism or Multinational Cooperation? The Role of Big Business in Supplying Light and Power to St. Petersburg before 1917. Business and economic history, 540–549.

Ness, I. and Cope, Z. (2016) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (Palgrave Macmillan).

Painter, D. S. (1987) Private Power and Public Policy: Multinational Oil Corporations and United States Foreign Policy, 1941–54 (I.B.Tauris).

Painter, D. S. (1993) The United States, Great Britain, and Mossadegh (Pittsburgh, Pa.]; Washington, D.C.: Pew Charitable Trusts ; Distributed by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University).

Philip, G. (1982) Oil and Politics in Latin America: Nationalist Movements and State Companies (Cambridge University Press).

Shafiee, K. (2018) Machineries of Oil (The MIT Press) Available online at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/machineries-oil (accessed 18 May 2018).

Shulman, P. A. (2015) Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).

Szeman, I. and Boyer, D. (eds.) (2017) Energy Humanities: An Anthology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).

Vitalis, R., 1955- (2006) America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier | Robert Vitalis (Stanford University Press) Available online at: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=10072 (accessed 18 May 2018).

Wu, S. (2015) Empires of Coal: Fueling China?s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press).