A Pipeline Runs Through It is a fresh comprehensive in-depth look at the social economic
political and geopolitical forces involved in our transition to the modern oil age. It tells an
extraordinary story from the pre-industrial history of petroleum through to large-scale
production in the mid-19th century and the development of a dominant fully-fledged oil
industry by the early 20th century. Petroleum was used as an adhesive by Neanderthals as a
waterproofing agent in Noah's Ark and as a weapon during the Crusades. Its eventual extraction
from the earth in vast quantities transformed light heat and power.This was always a story of
imperialist violence political disenfranchisement economic exploitation and environmental
destruction. The near total eradication of the Native Americans of New York Pennsylvania and
Ohio has barely been mentioned as a precondition for the emergence of the first industrialised
oil region in the United States. Britain's invasion of Upper Burma in 1885 was perhaps the
first war fought at least in part for access to oil the growth of Royal Dutch-Shell involved
genocidal fighting and the exploitation of oil in the Middle East arose seamlessly out of
Britain's prior political and military interventions in the region. Finally in an entirely new
analysis the book shows how British navy's increasingly desperate dependence on vulnerable
foreign sources of oil may have been a catalytic ingredient in the outbreak of the First World
War.--Publisher's website.
