Imagining the Age of Oil: Case Studies in British Petrocultures, 1865-1935

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the cultural history of oil in Britain over a seventyyear period, between 1865 and 1935. While much has been written about the economic, political, diplomatic, geopolitical, and military aspects of oil during this timeframe, there have been few investigations into the ways that cultural factors have shaped the history of oil in Britain, a gap in the literature that this study seeks to fill. Britain was one of the first industrialized nations to make the transition to oil and in the period under consideration, everyday consumption of the commodity increased dramatically, especially in the cities, where new oil technologies for heating, illumination, and transportation became commonplace conveniences. Using understudied sources such as public lectures, cartoons, advertisements, exhibitions, and architecture, the dissertation examines the discourses of transition that were created to help Britons navigate their changing energy landscapes. It maps the complexities, opportunities, and impasses that accompanied the historical rise of oil in Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and argues that the system of things that brought oil from the wellhead to the consumer was predicated on a vast constellation of ideas.how was oil imagined in Britain during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, and what major themes, stories, and ideas were involved in the shaping of these imaginaries? By engaging critically with these questions, the dissertation reveals how notions of a modern, technologically advanced, and futuristic Age of Oil fueled the development of early British petrocultures. Historiographical ConsiderationsCritical engagement around questions of energy has been sparse in the humanities and social sciences. As historian Ruth Sandwell has observed, "[g]iven the enormous role that fuel, power, and energy have always played in human societies…historians' silence about energy as a discrete force or phenomenon is more than a little surprising." 4 While scholars have paid some attention to hydroelectric power, nuclear power, and coal, there is a dearth of research on the history of oil, not only in Britain, but in several other oilconsuming countries as well. 5 As the editors of a special 2012 volume on contemporary oil cultures in the Journal of American Studies lamented: "the humanities have not had much to say about oil." 6 Little has changed in the historiography of oil in the intervening 4 R. Sandwell (ed.),

The British Economic Interests in Mesopotamia 1914-1918: A Study of Securing Oil, Trade, and Commercial Path

“…Britain's coal industry, generating over 200 million tons annually, was a significant export for over a century, but petroleum products and technology revolutionized daily life for over a century (Wereley, 2018). Besides, British and German interest in Middle Eastern railways and the knowledge of Mesopotamian oil date back to the 1830s (Ediger & Bowlus, 2020).…”