Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran: Labour, Decolonisation and Colonial Modernity, 1933–51 (Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World) - Softcover

Mattin Biglari

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474489613 ISBN 13: 9781474489614

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2026

Synopsis

How did British oil production in Iran shape both subaltern anticolonialism and colonial afterlives in the country?

• Examines the history of Iranian oil nationalisation ‘from below’, following struggles between the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP) and subaltern actors in the city of Abadan, southwest Iran
• Based on archival sources from Iran, UK and US, as well as Persian-language newspapers, oral histories, and memoirs
• Engages with energy history, postcolonial/subaltern studies, and science & technology studies to interrogate epistemic struggles over oil expertise, highlighting themes of technopolitics, environment, development, and embodied knowledge
• Adopts a multiscalar approach to situate Abadan in networks of colonialism and racial capitalism, especially through corporate social engineering schemes to produce racialised and gendered subjectivities
• Illuminates the paradox of resource nationalism in global decolonisation, promising economic emancipation and yet further entrenching colonial modernity

Iran’s nationalisation of oil in 1951 was a key catalyst for the rise of resource nationalism as an animating force of global decolonisation, expelling the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now known as BP) after nearly fifty years of domination in southwest Iran. Nationalising Oil & Knowledge in Iran turns attention to the origins of nationalisation in the everyday struggles between the oil company and subaltern actors in the city of Abadan, then home to the world’s largest oil refinery and deeply imbricated in networks of colonialism and racial capitalism. Engaging with energy history, postcolonial/subaltern studies, and science & technology studies, the book focuses on the politics of expertise: how nationalisation reproduced the epistemic coloniality of the oil company, which rested on local dispossession, social engineering, as well as racial and gendered segregation. It argues that nationalisation diverged from subaltern contestations of oil expertise in Abadan, which presented a more fundamental challenge to colonial modernity.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Mattin Biglari is a Lecturer in Asian and Middle Eastern Environmental History at the University of Bristol.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474489613
• ISBN 13: 9781474489614
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336