Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran

Dr Mattin Biglari is a Lecturer in Asian and Middle Eastern Environmental History at the University of Bristol.

• List of FiguresIntroduction: The Coloniality of Oil and Knowledge in Iran1. Refining Knowledge: Building the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the Abadan Refinery2. The City of Oil: Social Reproduction, Infrastructure and Anticolonial Resistance in Abadan3. The ‘Character’ of Engineering: Training, Subjectivity and Knowledge Production in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company4. The City of Science: Labour, Epistemic Struggle and Everyday Politics in the Abadan Refinery, 1946-19515. Expertise, Resource Nationalism and the Paradoxes of Oil Nationalisation in Iran6. Nationalisation from Below: The 1951 General StrikeEpilogue: Nationalised Oil and the Paradoxes of DecolonisationBibliographyIndex

A brilliantly argued and painstakingly researched investigation into the intersection of oil’s material politics and subaltern histories of decolonisation that challenges the methodological nationalism that has characterised much of the modern historiography of Iran. Biglari’s multi-layered and globally connected account of Iran’s struggles over oil knowledge reaches out far and wide, providing food for thought to scholars and students of the post-colony and the international oil industry.