The Russian Rockefellers
The Russian Rockefellers

Author: Robert W. Tolf

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0817965866

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The name of Nobel usually calls to mind Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and the internationally prestigious prizes that bear his name. But Alfred was only one member of a creative and innovative family who built an industrial empire in prerevolutionary Russia. The saga begins with an emigrÉ from Sweden, Immanuel Nobel, who was an architect, a pioneer producer of steam engines, and a maker of armaments, including the underwater mines that were widely used in the Crimean War. Immanuel's sons included Alfred; Robert, who directed the family's activities in the Caspian oil fields; and Ludwig, an engineering genius and manufacturing magnate whose boundless energy and fierce determination created the Russian petroleum industry. Ludwig's son Emanuel showed similar mettle, shrewdly bargaining with the Rothschilds for control of the Russian markets and competing head-on with Standard Oil, Royal Dutch, and Shell for lucrative world markets. Emanuel not only expanded the Russian oil industry but also helped to modernize the Russian navy and commanded a fleet of three hundred ships. Perhaps no family in history has played so decisive a role in building an industrial empire in an underdeveloped but resource-rich nation. Yet the achievements of the Nobel family have been largely forgotten. When the Bolsheviks came to power, the empire, which had taken eighty years to design and build, was nearly destroyed, bringing a sudden and bitter end to one of the most remarkable industrial odysseys in world history.

Historical Dictionary of the Netherlands
Historical Dictionary of the Netherlands

Author: Joop W. Koopmans

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2007-05-22

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0810864444

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The Netherlands, frequently but erroneously called Holland, is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. In the past few decades, it has been undergoing many transformations made possible by its dynamic and fast-moving political landscape. It has shifted from fierce nationalism toward a self-image of tolerance and permissiveness: the national identity and self-consciousness has slowly eroded through decolonization and immigration. Unfortunately, several murders of prominent, controversial politicians have started yet another shift away from tolerance, and economic stagnation has bred pessimism. Nonetheless, despite many trials and tribulations, there has been real progress, and the Dutch have perhaps done a better job of coming to terms with their limitations than many others in the world. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Netherlands contains more than 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on individual topics spanning the Netherlands' political, economic, and social system along with short biographies on important figures who have shaped the Netherlands' history. Supplementing the entries are a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and a bibliography, making this a superb quick reference on the Netherlands.

The Comparative Approach to American History
The Comparative Approach to American History

Author: C. Vann Woodward

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1997-11-27

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0195354613

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In the mid 1960s, C. Vann Woodward was asked to organize a program of broadcast lectures on US history for the Voice of America as part of a longer series designed to acquaint foreign audiences with leaders in American arts and sciences. Reasoning that a comparative approach "was peculiarly adapted to the interests and needs of foreign audiences," Woodward commissioned twenty-two noted scholars to cover classic topics in American history--the Civil War, the World Wars, slavery, immigration, and many others--but to add a comparative dimension by relating these topics to developments elsewhere in the world. The result was the 1968 Basic Books edition of The Comparative Approach to American History. Now, three decades later, Oxford is very pleased to be reissuing this classic collection of historical essays in a paperback edition, with a new introduction by Woodward that discusses the decline and resurgence of comparative history since the 1960s.

Moguls and Mandarins
Moguls and Mandarins

Author: Marian Kent

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-06-17

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1135234299

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A study of Britain's imperial policy in the Middle East over oil, finance and defence. This book brings together different accounts of British policy in the early 20th century, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, to reflect a consistent pattern of preoccupation, policy-making and diplomacy.

History 4° Celsius
History 4° Celsius

Author: Ian Baucom

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2020-07-24

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 147801203X

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In History 4° Celsius Ian Baucom continues his inquiries into the place of the Black Atlantic in the making of the modern and postmodern world. Putting black studies into conversation with climate change, Baucom outlines how the ongoing concerns of critical race, diaspora, and postcolonial studies are crucial to understanding the Anthropocene. He draws on materialist and postmaterialist thought, Sartre, and the science of climate change to trace the ways in which evolving political, cultural, and natural history converge to shape a globally destructive force. Identifying the quest for limitless financial gain as the primary driving force behind both the slave trade and the continuing increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, Baucom demonstrates that climate change and the conditions of the Black Atlantic, colonialism, and the postcolony are fundamentally entwined. In so doing, he argues for the necessity of establishing a method of critical exchange between climate science, black studies, and the surrounding theoretical inquiries of humanism and posthumanism.

Offshore Attachments
Offshore Attachments

Author: Chelsea Schields

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-05-23

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0520390814

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"In this highly original work, historian Chelsea Schields illuminates how the contested management of sex and race transformed the Caribbean into a crucial site in the global oil economy. By the mid-twentieth century, the Dutch islands of Curaçao and Aruba housed the world's largest oil refineries. To bolster this massive industrial experiment, oil corporations and political authorities offshored intimacy, circumventing laws regulating sex, reproduction, and the family in a bid to maximize profits and turn Caribbean subjects into citizens. Offshore Attachments reveals that, from boom to bust, Caribbean people challenged and embraced efforts to alter intimate behaviors in service of the energy economy, molding the industry from the ground up. Moving from Caribbean oil towns to European metropolises and examining such issues as sex work, contraception, kinship, and the constitution of desire, Schields narrates a surprising story of how racialized concern with sex shaped hydrocarbon industries as the age of oil met the end of empire"--