ABSTRACT

Because of its far-reaching consequences in so many aspects of modern economic and political life, the Second World War is commonly treated as a kind of watershed marking the boundary of two distinct eras, labelled for convenience, ‘pre-war’ and ‘post-war’. With some justification one can find a similar watershed in the history of the international petroleum industry, for the war with its immediate aftermath was associated with very marked changes in the structure and operations of the industry. But in spite of this temporal coincidence, it would be wrong to look on the war as a significant cause of these changes, for its importance for the long-run development of the industry relates more to the pace of events than to their type; some developments were retarded and others hastened, but the type and direction of change had other causes.