The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is one of the most recognizable acronyms among international organizations. It is mainly associated with the 'oil shock' of 1973 when prices of petroleum quadrupled and industrialized countries and consumers were forced to face the limits of their development model.

This is the first history of OPEC and of its members written by a professional historian. It carries the reader from the formation of the first petrostate in the world, Venezuela in the late 1920s, to the global ascent of petrostates and OPEC during the 1970s, to their crisis in the late-1980s and early- 1990s.

Formed in 1960, OPEC was the first international organization of the Global South. It was perceived as acting as the economic 'spearhead' of the Global South and acquired a role that went far beyond the realm of oil politics. Petrostates such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran were (and continue to be) key regional actors, and their enduring cooperation, defying wide political and cultural differences and even wars, speaks to the centrality of natural resources in the history of the twentieth century, and to the underlying conflict between producers and consumers of these natural resources.


The Rise and Fall of OPEC is a masterful book that contradicts the well-worn but essentialist understandings of oil as the root of authoritarianism, Middle East wars or environmental catastrophe. -- Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

Garavini does much more than simply set the record straight. He reorients our view of the international organization away from the overblown and exaggerated accounts of oil-weapon-wielding-sovereigns holding the West hostage. -- Robert Vitalis

Garavini's book is more than a history of OPEC, one of the most recognizable acronyms in the world (9). It aspires to be a global history of oil's role in shaping the twentieth century. -- Gregory Brew

The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century is an outstanding contribution to the international history of the twentieth century and deserves a wide audience. -- David Painter

This is not just a book about oil markets, the economy, and the oil industry. Scholars of energy and geopolitics will find a succinct and focused analysis of the development of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 'petrostates, ' the organization itself and the role it played the economic and political development of the twentieth century. -- Ellen R. Wald

The thesis of The Rise and Fall of OPEC is that the international cooperation among petrostates has constituted one of the most powerful drivers of the international history of the 20th Century -- Adriana Castagnoli, Il Sole 24 Ore [translated]