Industry, War and Stalin’s Battle for Resources; The Arctic and the Environment, Lars Rowe , (2021) London: I. B. Tauris, 240 pp. Pbk $39.95, Hdbk $120, Ebook 35.95 ISBN: 978-1-78453-7951 (Hdbk).

Abstract

This is a study about nickel and the political geography of the extractive commodities industry in the High North. Through the acute of the nickel industry in Pechenga/Petsamo Nikel/Kolosjoki Lowe explores a series of competing political geographies which defined the legitimacy of an Arctic space of ocean, mountain, tundra and of substrate space of nickel ore, of the built geographies of industrial node and network – of mine, refinery, production complex. Lowe explores overlapping claims of legitimacy on localised spaces and connects the extractive industry and political manoeuvring to international capital and the operating theatre of the global nickel mar-ket in the networked sense. The book explores an interesting series of inversions, a Finland geography granted but then coveted by Russia, a Canadian capital investment in a state then hostile to Allied powers, an opening to the ocean for Finland now closed. Each chapter opens and closes doors such that the essentially empty, constant geography of the Petsamo valley becomes a revolving door of inverted state, capital and material interests, constantly changing orientation and outcome while remaining anchored to the most immobile of human geographies, the mining of ore. The prospect historically of Liinakhamari ice-free port giving Finland a genuine naval, maritime, mercantile access to the Arctic Ocean is the maritime geography underpinning all inland operations. This dependence opens a series of overlapping interests making this a section of the Arctic cartography which is wholly satisfying to no one state. Rowe navigates this complex geography of a northern circle mountain port betwixt contemporary Norway, Finland and Russia. Lowe explores a geographic utilitarianism of industry in the Arctic through Finnish exploration, Canadian investment, German appropriation and finally forced development under Stalinist Russia. Petsamo then conforms to that Soviet production trope of foreign