Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy examines the simultaneous rise of fossil- fueled capitalism and mass democracy and asks very intelligent questions about the fate of democracy when oil production declines. Carbon Democracy retells historical events of the 20th and 21st centuries with a watchful eye on fossil fuels and their critical role in developing modern democracy and its limitations. The story of oil is not about the brave and innovative men to found this wondrous substance, but of the efforts to sabotage and limit production growth while never allowing the public to understand what was happening.

An insightful historical account of how changes in energy production have expanded and restricted possibilities for democratic governance … Mitchell’s provocative approach is a critical intervention into the study of the politics of energy … Recommended. Also highlights the Ottoman empire ambitious to conquer this oil which helps now to understand the fight for the new energy source (natural gas) in the east mediterranean sea. This book is well worth reading, though I still question the amount of emphasis placed on energy as *the* basis of democracy/capitalism. Discourse/representation and governmenality are more closely associated with violence than micro-structures of self-discipline.In this magisterial study, Timothy Mitchell rethinks the history of energy, bringing into his grasp environmental politics, the struggle for democracy, and the place of the Middle East in the modern world.

Ibn Saud's campaign to consolidate power and unify the Arabian Peninsula was financed by Standard of California (now Chevron), which also stopped him when he was moving too far north toward Jordan and Palestine. Less racist authors tended to gravitate to the “resource curse,” the idea that oil wealth slows down development and invites foreign intervention. Also the relationship between authority in religion and globalisation and how this may come to crisis. This was quite unfortunate timing as the US’ shale oil boom kicked off the next year and led many to claim that this completely disproved the naysayers who were predicting the end of oil. Mitchell begins the book by contrasting the qualities of coal and oil and the infrastructure required to extract, transport, and use each carbon-based fuel.Even when countries managed to wrest control of their oil resources from foreign imperialists, the nature of oil helped prevent the development of a powerful working class, and instead put power in the hands of government elites. First, the 2013 paperback edition includes a valuable afterword that is not in the Hardbound or ebook versions of the text.

The boroughs of Parliament had not kept up with increase and many larger cities went unrepresented while uninhabited places had two representatives. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy. Timothy Mitchell was born in Britain, and got a first in history at Cambridge before moving to the US where he is now professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia. After World War II, Defense Secretary Forrestal recognized the need to construct an American lifestyle that required lots of energy consumption, to support the oil industry. The book has been influential in fields as diverse as anthropology, history, law, philosophy, cultural studies, and art history.On the other hand, Mitchell successfully avoids criticisms of material determinism by elucidating the role of fossil fuels as one of many contributors to political and economic change. The “energy crisis” of 1973-4 was no such thing: a group of Arab states cut the oil supply in protest at US support for Israel, a decision unconnected to a rise in oil taxes. As empires crumbled, democratic impulses were overwhelmed by a new doctrine of self-determination which enabled foreign companies to retain control. Laborers mined coal underground and were necessary to load coal aboard ships at seaports, creating opportunities to form unions, organize strikes, and leverage their political voice.

The power of organized labor was limited because they could no longer take advantage of the state’s vulnerability as they did during the era of a reliance on coal. For most of the 20th century, the problem was *too much* oil in the world, which threatened oil companies’ high profits and imperial powers’ control over the resource. Reclassification of oil sources has followed the platueau of extraction since 2005, but most of the oldest and biggest oil fields, making up around half of conventional oil production, are all in decline, 5% or more, every year. It lacks a narrative for this section, and instead pulls the reader through the shifting oil holdings in the middle east in lists disguised as paragraphs.By the end of the eighteenth century, common men who lacked the right to vote were vociferously arguing that the power came from them, and they deserved parliamentary reform. Money, not "stuff," became the subject, and mathematics, not organic factors, became the method of analysis. As a result, though their basic epistemological perspectives are quite divergent, both Mitchell in this book and Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism provide important narratives about the individuals and groups that support, represent and seek to underpin corporate exploitation. And it is unable to do so because it fails to incorporate “in the equation” two variables that to me are absolutely critical: state and consumption. While economics had focused on the allocation of scarce resources, the expansion of oil supplies and other natural resources created an expectation and need for endless economic growth that could be managed centrally.