ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether raw material cartels have differed markedly in practice from international commodity agreements. These commodities may be divided into two groups: those, such as crude petroleum, copper and mercury, for which cartel action was important both before and after the Second World War; and those, such as bauxite, uranium and iron ore, for which cartel action was largely a phenomenon of the 1970s. The volume of data available has made it necessary to exclude quite ruthlessly anything which is only of marginal interest and to allocate the space available to a brief consideration of those cartels which appear to offer the most interesting examples. Even this lower level was sustained only until April 1930 when, in the face of substantially reduced demand and increased production from non-participants notably Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) -the cartel lost control and prices fell dramatically.
