The event is FREE & open to all but BOOKING BY WEDNESDAY 22 June 2016 IS ESSENTIAL. Please reserve a place by emailing  bips@britac.ac.uk.

The lecture will be given by PROFESSOR DR TOURAJ ATABAKI who is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and Professor of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia, University of Leiden. The extraction of oil in 1908 and the unprecedented expansion of the oil refinery, shipping docks and company towns in southwest Persia/Iran opened a new chapter in the Persian/Iranian labour history. Having enjoyed an absolute monopoly on the extraction, production and marketing of Iran’s oil, the Anglo-Persian/Iranian Oil Company (APOC, AIOC, now British Petroleum; BP) emerged as one of the major players in Iranian politics during the first half of the twentieth century.

The history of British Petroleum in Iran has been the subject of number of major studies. However, all of these studies are primarily focused on the company history or the state and its relationship with the oil company. Professor Atabaki’s contribution to the history of the oil industry in Iran is distinct, insofar as he attempts to provide a history of the oil company from below, investigating the interactions between oil workers, the oil company and the Iranian state. To this end, he focuses on the main elements determining the demographic composition of the labour force (ethnicity, gender, and age), labour formation (recruitment, skills, training and education), labour relations (wages and labour discipline), labour migration, mobility and integration and the oil workers’ living conditions inside and outside of the company towns (including housing, nutrition, hygiene, health and leisure). This study will aim to provide a comprehensive assessment of the working conditions and material circumstances of the oil labourers, at work and at home, and within their communities. It is based on a larger research project on the social history of labour in the Iranian oil industry (1908-2008) currently underway at the International Institute of Social History Amsterdam.