Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, returns to Europe’s historic dependence of Russian gas.
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Helen Thompson, Political Economy Professor at the University of Cambridge, has just published an exciting book (Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, 2022, untranslable), enlightening current political turmoil to The light of three parallel stories: those of energy, the economy (especially monetary issues), and democracies. It returns to how European addiction to Russian energy has been built for a century.
Your book starts at the end of the XIX e century. The coal era ends, that of oil begins. What is the impact for Europe?
Britain would have difficulty being the power she was in the nineteenth century without coal, which allowed industrialization. But she did not have petroleum. Idem in France and in the rest of Europe. On the other hand, the United States had. When, in the European government circles, it was understood that the world was changing, the rise of the United States born a deep fear. Winston Churchill (Member of Parliament from 1901) in particular was obsessed with the idea of passing the British navy from coal to oil. He said he had to find a supply in the Middle East, especially on the side of Persia, where oil had been discovered in 1888. He thinks that anyone will control the Middle East will be European power capable. to compete with the United States.
When did the Russian oil come to?
In the first decade of the XX e century, Russia becomes the largest oil producer in the world, but because of the conflicts in Tsarist Russia, production slows down. Europe wants to diversify the United States. But the supply of Iran, for example, is not as important as the British and the French hop it. Also, when Stalin revives the oil industry, all European countries turn to the purchase of Soviet oil, in the late 1920s and in the 1930s.
But after the end of the Second World War, the American administration of Harry Truman is not favorable. She wants Europeans to buy oil from the Western hemisphere: United States, Mexico, Venezuela … for Europeans, the only alternative that remains is the Middle East with, in case of crisis, the Americans, who are the Supplier ultimately.
But the fiasco of the Suez crisis in 1956, with the failed attempt of France and the United Kingdom to take control of this corridor essential to the transport of oil, occurs …
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