Standard Oil and the Battle for the Ottoman Market, 1864-1914

ABSTRACT Scholars have rarely acknowledged that international oil companies first entered the Middle East to sell oil rather than to seek sources of it. The arrival of American kerosene in 1864 began this understudied preamble to the region’s oil history, with Standard Oil dominating the Ottoman market until the 1880s. Russian oil then flooded the market and pushed Standard Oil out by the 1890s, though Standard had regained a foothold before World War I. This article draws two major conclusions from this market battle. First, the competition for the Ottoman market demonstrates that it was the contest for oil markets, more than the fight for oil sources, that led to the global oil industry’s cartelisation in the early twentieth century. Second, this study shows how an American multinational pressured the United States government to expand its regional presence, thus helping to elucidate the deepening of American engagement with the Middle East.