OIL, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE COLD WAR
BOOK TALK
Participants
SPEAKER: Gregory Brew, Yale University
DISCUSSANT: Ervand Abrahamian, Baruch College, CUNY Graduate Center
MODERATOR: Arang Keshavarzian, New York University
When
December 8, 2022
5-7pm EST
Where
In Person: Richard Ettinghausen Library at the Hagop Kevorkian Center
255 Sullivan Street New York, NY 10012
Zoom: BIT.LY/NYUISI1208
DESCRIPTION
Between 1941 and 1965, Iran developed into the world’s first ‘petro-state,’ where oil represented the bulk of state revenue and supported an industrializing economy, expanding middle class, and powerful administrative and military apparatus. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources in English and Persian, Petroleum and Progress in Iran illustrates how the Pahlavi petro-state emerged from a confluence of forces–some global, some local. The shah’s particular form of oil-based authoritarianism evolved from interactions with American developmentalists, Iranian technocrats, and major Western oil companies, all against the looming backdrop of the United States’ Cold War policy and the coup d’etat of August 1953. By placing oil at the center of the Cold War narrative, Petroleum and Progress in Iran contextualizes Iran’s slide into petrolic authoritarianism within its relationship to international oil, the global development movement, and the United States.