'Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran: Labour, Decolonisation and Colonial Modernity, 1933–51'

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Mattin Biglari about his book, Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran: Labour, Decolonisation and Colonial Modernity, 1933–51 (2025).

Iran’s nationalisation of oil in 1951 was a key catalyst for the rise of resource nationalism as an animating force of global decolonisation, expelling the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now known as BP) after nearly 50 years of domination in southwest Iran. Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran turns to the origins of nationalisation in the everyday struggles between the oil company and subaltern actors in the city of Abadan, then home to the world’s largest oil refinery and deeply imbricated in networks of colonialism and racial capitalism.

Engaging with energy history, postcolonial/subaltern studies, and science and technology studies, the book focuses on the politics of expertise: how nationalisation reproduced the epistemic coloniality of the oil company, which rested on local dispossession, social engineering, as well as racial and gendered segregation. It argues that nationalisation diverged from subaltern contestations of oil expertise in Abadan, which presented a more fundamental challenge to colonial modernity.

About the series

The Histories of Capitalism and Race seminar series by the SOAS Walter Rodney Collective is back in semester 2 with an exciting line-up of speakers! Our theme for this semester is Empire, Race, Capital: Readings Beyond the Atlantic, and we invite you to join us for book discussions with Sharad Chari, Julia Elyachar, Mattin Biglari, and Nasser Abourahme.

Organiser

The Walter Rodney Collective is a new research cluster in the School of History, Religions and Philosophies at SOAS, University of London.

We are named after the influential pan-African, Marxist scholar-activist Walter Rodney, who studied for a PhD at SOAS between 1963 and 1966.