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Oil, God and Gold: The Story of Aramco and the Saudi Kings |
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Reviews |
Description:
Anthony Cave Brown, the author of several well-received books on the history of espionage, here turns his attention to a story as full of intrigue as any spy novel: the rise of Aramco, once the world's leading oil concern. Led by a consortium of American investors, Aramco managed through considerable guile to insert itself in territory tightly controlled by the British--thanks, in part, to the labors of one H. St. John Philby, a British spy (and father of the notorious Soviet double agent Kim Philby) who held great influence in the court of Saudi king Ibn Saud, and who, writes Brown, "was to betray the British government in favor of Standard Oil." The Americans won Saudi favor not only through Philby, but also through an intrepid Chicago-born entrepreneur and diplomat named Charles Crane, who did for Ibn Saud what the British failed to do: Crane built a costly waterworks that brought drinking water into the Saudi interior. (For his part, Philby obtained the monopoly on selling Ford automobiles in the country. In six years, he sold the king 1,450 cars.) The result was a concession to the American concern to what the U.S. State Department once called "the most valuable commercial prize in the history of the planet," namely, the vast oil fields of Arabia; for an initial investment of £100,000, Aramco eventually extracted more than a trillion dollars from the Arabian reserves. The American interest in Saudi and Persian Gulf oil has remained strong ever since, Brown writes--he even calls the Gulf War of 1991 "the Aramco War"-- although the company was nationalized in the mid-1980s. Brown's careful research and vivid prose yield a fine read for anyone interested in contemporary affairs and world history. --Gregory McNamee
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