Oil in the Imperial Periphery

Oil in the Imperial Periphery

The majority of the nearly two hundred sovereign states that exist today were born through decolonization following the end of the Second World War. With the colonial metropole fearing the emergence of unstable and unviable states, smaller territories were often included in larger entities through mergers of various protectorates and colonial territories. Nonetheless, several small colonies—Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Brunei, as a few examples—m…