* Acknowledgments * Note on Translation * Introduction *1. The Land Where Salt and Oil Flowed: Austrian Galicia *2. Glacian California: Battle for Land and Mineral Rights *3. Petroleum Fever: Foreign Entepreneurs and a New National Industry *4. The Boys Don't Sleep at Home: Workers' Dreams of Wealth and Independence *5. Oil City: The Epidemic of Overproduction *6. Blood of the Earth: The Crisis of World War I *7. A Hotly Disputed Territory: The Struggle for Galicia * Conclusion * Appendix: Data on Oil Production * Notes * Archival and Primary Sources * Index
Combining social, political, and economic history with great aplomb, Oil Empire greatly enriches the history of an understudied region. Frank skillfully engages the bewildering patchwork that was Galicia. Poles battled Ukrainians, Catholics persecuted Jews, agrarian nobles fought bourgeois modernizers, socialists rose and fell, German-speaking civil servants tried to lord it over everyone, and hordes of peasants emigrated to other lands. The imperial center alternately clashed with and ignored the provincial periphery. Frank has constructed a balanced narrative, a sophisticated analysis, and a very persuasive argument. -- Thomas K. McCraw, editor of Creating Modern Capitalism In this riveting account, Alison Frank deftly brings to life the dramatic world of the Galician oil industry in imperial Austria. Her vivid portrait examines the conflicting efforts of a strange collection of characters indeed--mad scientists, wildcatters, Galician aristocrats, Habsburg bureaucrats, foreign investors, and dueling nationalists--to appropriate the earth's riches to serve their various ambitions. The results transformed an 'Austrian El Dorado' into a living hell on earth. -- Pieter M. Judson, Swarthmore College Oil Empire is a significant and original contribution that situates economic development in its cultural, social, environmental, and political settings. The book will interest scholars of economic history, history of the oil industry, nationalism studies, Central European history, and environmental history. -- Catherine Albrecht, University of Baltimore
Alison Fleig Frank is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.
Combining social, political, and economic history with great
aplomb, Oil Empire greatly enriches the history of an understudied
region. Frank skillfully engages the bewildering patchwork that was
Galicia. Poles battled Ukrainians, Catholics persecuted Jews,
agrarian nobles fought bourgeois modernizers, socialists rose and
fell, German-speaking civil servants tried to lord it over
everyone, and hordes of peasants emigrated to other lands. The
imperial center alternately clashed with and ignored the provincial
periphery. Frank has constructed a balanced narrative, a
sophisticated analysis, and a very persuasive argument.
*Thomas K. McCraw, editor of Creating Modern Capitalism*
In this riveting account, Alison Frank deftly brings to life the
dramatic world of the Galician oil industry in imperial Austria.
Her vivid portrait examines the conflicting efforts of a strange
collection of characters indeed--mad scientists, wildcatters,
Galician aristocrats, Habsburg bureaucrats, foreign investors, and
dueling nationalists--to appropriate the earth's riches to serve
their various ambitions. The results transformed an 'Austrian El
Dorado' into a living hell on earth.
*Pieter M. Judson, Swarthmore College*
Oil Empire is a significant and original contribution that situates
economic development in its cultural, social, environmental, and
political settings. The book will interest scholars of economic
history, history of the oil industry, nationalism studies, Central
European history, and environmental history.
*Catherine Albrecht, University of Baltimore*
[Frank's] pioneering and sophisticated book is the fruit of patient
archival digging in five languages, a comprehensive command of the
relevant literature, and cross-disciplinary, collegial interaction.
It integrates technology and business into political, social, and
economic history and proves that treasures may lie in forgotten
episodes of the past...Frank sets out to explain 'why oil did not
make Galicia rich' and achieves a fascinating account of oil
producers, worker-peasants, government bureaucrats, landowners, and
an assortment of others, often unsavory characters whose economic
motives varied even within their respective groups and whose
identities were overlaid with multiple ethnic, religious,
linguistic, and geographic markers.
*Enterprise and Society*
Whatever one's views about the merits of regulation, in theory or
in practice, Frank deserves to be thanked for piecing together this
fascinating story from archives in half a dozen countries, thus
opening a new dimension to our understanding of Galicia that has
languished far too long almost exclusively in the literary
domain.
*International History Review*
This book is a good read. Not only is the material absorbing, but
Frank often phrases things in refreshing ways. It is an important
work for those interested in the history of the Habsburg monarchy,
Poles and Ukrainians, and the oil industry.
*American Historical Review*
Frank's fascinating book conducts a historical excursion to those
oil fields [of eastern Galicia]--through the ages of their economic
rise, boom, decline, and collapse--and she offers a richly
insightful analysis of how the program for the development of the
oil industry ultimately failed to bring economic prosperity to
remedy the proverbial misery of Galicia...Frank's work offers a
multifaceted understanding of the oil industry, not only in its
social, political, and economic aspects, but also in terms of
technology, nationality, and culture...[An] important book. Oil
Empire--full of vivid accounts, sharp insights, and provocative
questions--will compel historians to reflect on the multiple
dimensions of imperial, national, and provincial history in central
Europe.
*Central European History*
Alison Frank takes "a little known curiosity"--the Galician oil
boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--and has
written of it one of the boldest and most original histories of
East Central Europe to appear in a long time. Frank weaves a
marvelous tale about a commodity bubbling up from under the earth's
surface...and the myriad characters "who hoped to use oil to
achieve a certain goal."...It is, in sum, a madcap history of
modernity from the fringes of the Hapsburg Monarchy.
*Austrian Studies Newsletter*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |