Energy and Sovereignty: Oil and Decolonisation in Algeria and France, 1956-1975

Jennings, Gemma (2024). Energy and Sovereignty: Oil and Decolonisation in Algeria and France, 1956-1975. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis argues that the histories of decolonisation and energy need to be combined in new ways. Through a socio-technical analysis of the hydrocarbon sector, the thesis argues that oil fundamentally reshaped the end of empire and process of decolonisation across France and Algeria.
The analysis adopts the method of ‘following’ oil and gas across France and Algeria. Traversing the conventional watershed of 1962 and Algerian independence, it focuses on the two decades between the discovery of oil in Algeria in the mid-late 1950s and the mid-1970s, when Algeria stood at the forefront of an international struggle for economic independence and a new global economic order, as a result of its successful nationalisation of oil.
The thesis explores the relationship between an assemblage of ‘oil actors,’ spanning the state, private companies, oil workers, and local communities, with a focus on how these actors moulded sovereignty and nation-building. I argue that the social and commercial influence of these actors shaped political agency as well as policy application and outcomes in ways that have been overlooked by a historiography which focuses on oil as an economic prize or elite tool. By analysing the nexus of relations that bound oil actors together, the thesis seeks to shed new light on how these actors mediated, interpreted, and deployed imperial structures and legacies. The account uses these perspectives to rethink the conventional chronology of decolonisation across the Mediterranean.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):