Connected Histories of Oil in Latin America

Connected Histories of Oil in Latin America provides a global history of oil in Latin America, from the first oil fields drilled in Peru in the 1860s to the current exploitation at the offshore and tropical forest frontier, reframed through a non-Eurocentric perspective.

Offering a new geographic viewpoint, the book builds a place for the Global South in the narratives of the global energy transitions of the Anthropocene, going beyond the Eurocentric models that tend to drive all aspects of this history back to Great Britain’s first industrialization and U.S. capitalism. It demonstrates how petroleum has been a central component for the shaping of nationalist and emancipatory projects in Latin America throughout the 20th century. By incorporating insights from environmental history, labor history, and the energy humanities, the book argues that Latin American societies actively shaped global fossil-fuel modernity rather than merely adapting to it, revealing oil as a profoundly transnational phenomenon. Organized in four parts – Epochs, Places, Actors and Archives, the book moves away from nation-centered and economy-focused narratives, highlighting landscape, environment, culture, and technology as central elements of analysis.

This book is important reading for students and scholars from social sciences and energy humanities, as well as public policy makers and a wider audience interested in current environmental issues.