This workshop explores the role of extractive industry actors in shaping the global political and economic order and their evolving relationships with international organisations across the long twentieth century.
This workshop examines the influential yet often hidden role of corporate actors — particularly extractive industries — in shaping the global political and economic order over the long twentieth century. Focusing on industries centred on oil, gas, minerals, metals, and rare earths, it explores how corporate actors operated within, through, and against international organisations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.
The workshop brings together papers spanning from the nineteenth century to the 1970s and 1980s, with attention to the tools, strategies, and forms of expertise deployed by businesses and their networks in global metropoles including Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Geneva, New York, and Santiago. It highlights the complex ecosystems of extractive capitalism — comprising firms, financiers, experts, engineers, and lobbyists — and their shifting relationships with international institutions.
Special attention is given to the impact of formal decolonisation on extractive enterprises, as well as to the political, economic, and environmental consequences of corporate influence in post-colonial contexts. Conceived as a paper-development workshop, the meeting emphasises discussion and peer review with the aim of refining contributions for a collective forum publication.