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> The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. I

by oa335 1y ago

> The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Iran is outside the Arab world.

dredmorbius 1y ago
It's difficult to come up with a comprehensive name that encompasses the oil-rich lands within eastern / middle-eastern / central Asia, north Africa, and south-eastern Europe. I'm strongly reminded of Peter Adamson's Google Lecture on philosophy in the Islamic World, which is almost entirely dedicated to the matter of why he calls it the Islamic World, rather than Arabic, Persian, Islam, or several other possible names. Ideas are maps, and here the map fits the terrain fairly poorly. Any term is going to have its inaccuracies, and will inflate or neglect one or more parties. Ultimately, though, that specific matter is of very limited interest or discussion potential.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  Resource cursed countries?
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    That too, but there's the geographical continuity which spans continents (at least as we generally classify them), cultures, language, and religion. Resource curse isn't oil specific, and you might include some remote outliers into that group as well: Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria, for example, all oil producers, and numerous others throughout the world based on other natural resources, with Nauru being perhaps the most spectacular boom-bust case. The question of how / why / whether the US avoided the resource curse is another interesting one. I'd argue that it's similar to the case of the UK, in that 1) energy resources and industrialisation arose more-or-less simultaneously, 2) in a world with no industrial rivals and 3) with a fairly wide regional variance in both. In the case of the US, industry settled largely in the Great Lakes / North-East regions, whilst energy was focused in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The latter three far more resemble resource-cursed countries in their economic, political, and socioeconomic profiles, though much of that is tied up in ... other historical baggage, to avoid taking this thread entirely off the rails ;-)

by oa335 1y ago

> The history of oil development is so poorly known in the Arab world. Comment you replied to is talking about the history of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Iran is outside the Arab world.

dredmorbius 1y ago

It's difficult to come up with a comprehensive name that encompasses the oil-rich lands within eastern / middle-eastern / central Asia, north Africa, and south-eastern Europe. I'm strongly reminded of Peter Adamson's Google Lecture on philosophy in the Islamic World, which is almost entirely dedicated to the matter of why he calls it the Islamic World, rather than Arabic, Persian, Islam, or several other possible names. Ideas are maps, and here the map fits the terrain fairly poorly. Any term is going to have its inaccuracies, and will inflate or neglect one or more parties. Ultimately, though, that specific matter is of very limited interest or discussion potential.

jacquesm 1y ago
Resource cursed countries?
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  That too, but there's the geographical continuity which spans continents (at least as we generally classify them), cultures, language, and religion. Resource curse isn't oil specific, and you might include some remote outliers into that group as well: Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria, for example, all oil producers, and numerous others throughout the world based on other natural resources, with Nauru being perhaps the most spectacular boom-bust case. The question of how / why / whether the US avoided the resource curse is another interesting one. I'd argue that it's similar to the case of the UK, in that 1) energy resources and industrialisation arose more-or-less simultaneously, 2) in a world with no industrial rivals and 3) with a fairly wide regional variance in both. In the case of the US, industry settled largely in the Great Lakes / North-East regions, whilst energy was focused in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. The latter three far more resemble resource-cursed countries in their economic, political, and socioeconomic profiles, though much of that is tied up in ... other historical baggage, to avoid taking this thread entirely off the rails ;-)