Carbon Democracy, written by Timothy Mitchell, is a book that tackles the history of democracy in oil producing countries and the industrial states. It explains the history of energy and the political pressures it brought to both producing states such as the Middle East, and to industrious countries such as Great Britain and the United States. The book explains the possibility of development of modern democracy from the production and use of fossil fuels. The producing countries relied on crude oil for revenue, and due to the abundance of oil in those countries, they could reorganize their political structure under the economy brought about by revenue earned from exporting oil to the Western hemisphere. The Western countries had a high in demand…show more content… Again, with the increase of revenue, a demand for the creation of a body to govern that income was established, so that the growing economy could be controlled. With the creation of governments, a high value of income was placed in the hands of a few high-ranking individuals. They alone had the power to control the production and exportation of resources, mainly crude oil as mentioned in this book. Crude oil production eventually was placed in the hands of a few middle-class level citizens, which brought the rise of capitalism. When capitalism broke out among the Middle Eastern countries, the lower-class citizens were left far behind as their economy grew. When that happened, the Middle East had the highest unemployment rate and poverty levels in the world. The governments, no longer following democracy rule, began controlling their citizens and resources through military rule. They concentrated more on crude oil money, therefore neglecting workers and their labor demands. Actions such as this increased the oppression of the lower-class citizens. Another new issue, corruption, denied every citizen an opportunity to invest in and spend income from the production and exportation of the crude oil from their country (Mitchell, pg. 15). Carbon Democracy showed that the more crude oil a country was…show more content… The Middle East became the second highest group of crude oil-producing countries, replacing Latin American countries (Mitchell, pg. 24). This made the Middle East gradually form governments to take control of crude oil movement and financial flow. This was also the time when countries such as Iraq, Algeria, Syria, and Libya became independent of British and French rule. Simultaneously, Iran and Saudi Arabia began to sabotage oil networks in hopes of successfully ending the United States foreign control of crude oil in their countries. They were successful in occasionally disrupting and sometimes halting the supply of crude oil exported to foreign countries. This was the tactic used to regain control of crude oil production and movement from the Middle East (Mitchell, pg. 12). They also re-routed crude oil supplies and constructed new refineries as a way of demonstrating their power over and management of crude oil by Western oil
