A cut-throat race for the worlds most valuable resource.
The English want it, the French want it, the Germans want it and they are all coming across the world to get it. Sultan Abdülhamid II knows that whatever it is, he better get to it before they do. This text is a record of a 19th century cocktail of blood and oil and the catastrophic consequences that erupted from it. In a move that sent a shockwave of outrage rolling through his government, Abdülhamid made the decision to seize the land in Northern Iraq as private property for his family rather than leaving it as part of the empire. This was a calculated maneuver assembled on the astonishing prediction that eventually the English would take his empire, but when they did, if the notoriously valuable land was private property, they would have no rights to it. Unfortunately, this clever incision was overturned by his power base and just as he had anticipated, the English later took Kirkuk and all of its wealth with it. The story of the first time that the oil in Iraq set international politics on fire and what one man did to fight the flames.