The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

Without oil, no globalization would exist. Oil enables people to “do anything and go anywhere at anytime” (223). The precursor to oil was whale oil, which was London’s solution to lighting textile factories. When the whale population diminished and prices increased, people turned to two solutions. The less common one was coal and its derivative methane, which created the danger of explosions in mines. A more widespread solution was kerosene. Initially, the process of sourcing it from coal was very expensive. In the 1850s came the discovery that kerosene could be cheaply and quickly sourced from oil. Then, in 1858, an American discovered a means to procure plentiful amounts of oil via drilling. Whether a country possessed oil in the early 20th century determined whether it was a military power or still “on horseback” (226). Before World War II, oil was considered a national resource and kept for internal use. The US supplied its allies with oil during that war.

After World War II and the gradual end of imperialism, oil became a global commodity, and the US Navy guarded its transport. Former colonies of imperial powers, such as Iran and Nigeria, became independent oil suppliers to the world in the globalization era.