THE OIL AGE ARRIVES29Thesiger’s idealized depiction notwithstanding, it is difficult to imag-
ine the frightening crush of change that oil unleashed. Where foreign
powers, sometimes in collusion with regional elites, had previously
sought to fend off modernization, the oil age abruptly pried open these
insular societies. Western technology and culture upended the social
order, bringing wealth, rebellion, and loss.
THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN AND OTHER
SALT DOMESBy the early 1900s, oil went from being a provider of illumination in
kerosene lamps to a fuel for transportation in automobiles equipped with
internal combustion engines. The automobile age gave oil a huge boost,
kindling demand for gasoline, which had up until then been a waste
product.
Then, in 1911, Winston Churchill converted Britain’s Royal Navy
from coal to oil, quickly conferring strategic importance upon the
fuel— and the lands in which it could be found. Importing countries
competed for access to oil- rich regions as a militar y necessit y. The Dutch
supply came from Indonesia. France’s Rothschild and Sweden’s Nobel
families bought into oil in Azerbaijan and supplied it to Europe and Japan.
The British government acquired a controlling share of the Anglo- Persian
Oil Co.— today’s BP— to ensure supply from new oilfields in Iran and Iraq.
As oil demand grew, the world’s military powers turned their attention
to the hermit sheikhdoms of the Arabian Peninsula. Arabia’s 1,300- year
sequestration would end when a crew of American wildcatters from Stan-
dard Oil of California docked their vessel at the island of Bahrain. Abdel-
rahman Munif ’s classic novel Cities of Salt captures the pre- oil period and
the subsequent upheaval. Munif ’s rendering of the transformation of
Saudi Arabia is a chronicle of cultural ruin. American prospectors arrive
in a remote but lush wadi, a caravan stop favored for its bubbling springs
and green date palms. Resident tribesmen look on in shock as the