The Real Oil Shock

 

Introduction

Would provide a brief introduction of the topic, the limitations of existing scholarship, and the links this work intends to make that will fill in these blank spots.  It will lay out the specific argument that the Oil Shocks were necessary for creating the modern, financialized world order by effectively privatizing the creation of currency and providing the necessary liquid capital to transform finance in a similar fashion to how the resources provided by Columbian Conquest made European imperialism possible and the cotton trade was utilized as the launchpad for the Industrial Revolution.

Chapter One: The World Before the Shocks

Discusses the state of international finance and the oil industry before the oil shocks from the 1933 Saudi concession which initiated oil drilling in that country by the Arab-American Oil Company to the founding of OPEC.  It will include discussion of Bretton Woods, the impact of reliably cheap oil on global economics, the growing Eurocurrency market, and other related factors.

Chapter Two: When Oil Shocked the World

Covers the rise of OPEC, the 1973 Oil Shock, the attempted 1967 oil embargo, the tensions which led to the first Oil Shock, and the consequences it had for the global economy and OPEC's members.  This chapter's emphasis will be on dissecting the broader economic and social impacts of the Shock with particular focus on how it challenged finance.

Chapter Three: Beggar Thy Neighbor

Investigates the divergent, often conflicting policies of the US and their allies in responding to the Oil Shocks, the different approaches taken to cope with the new petrocapital cycle, and how these clashing objectives opened up space for the private sector to operate more or less unhindered.  Three areas of specific discussion will be how this transformed the Eurocurrency market, led to the creation of the petrodollar monetary system, and

Ryan C. Smith is an independent scholar specializing in modern finance, the oil industry, energy and geopolitics, and the Middle East. He received his Ph.D. in Economic and Social History from the University of Glasgow in 2022.