Oil Rush in the Imperial Baku: Reciprocal Impacts between Industry, Environment, and Urbanisation

Lilija Wedel

doi:10.51663/pnz.66.2.07

Authors

Lilija Wedel Municipal Archive Sarstedt / University of Bielefeld

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51663/pnz.66.2.07

Keywords:

oil industry, Russian Empire, Baku, environmental history, urbanization, resource regimes

Abstract

This article examines the rapid expansion of the oil industry in and around Baku during the late Russian Empire and its effects on industrial development, environmental change, and urban transformation. Drawing on contemporary newspapers, advertisements, corporate publications, and technical sources, it situates the Baku oil boom within broader debates about imperial industrialisation and resource frontiers. The article argues that oil extraction, refining, and transport not only stimulated economic growth and infrastructural modernisation but also generated significant environmental pressures. Pollution, fire hazards, and logistical bottlenecks emerged as central challenges that shaped municipal policies, regulatory practices, and public debate. Particular attention is paid to the role of newspapers and professional publications in disseminating technical knowledge, framing environmental problems, and influencing discussions of urban development. By integrating approaches from environmental, business, and urban history, the article demonstrates that industrial expansion in Baku was a reciprocal process in which economic growth, environmental transformation, and governance evolved in constant interaction. The case of Baku offers broader insights into the functioning of imperial resource economies and the socio-ecological consequences of rapid industrialisation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

References

Sources and literature

Archival/Museum sources

Milli Azərbaycan Tarixi Muzeji – National Museum of the History of Azerbaijan: SMF 73/1, Şollarda və Bakıya çəkiləcək su kəmərində tikilən tutma qurğularının qiymət cədvəli əlavə edilməklə bağlanan 1 saylı kontrakt (müqavilə). Alman dilində 12 vərəq. Frankfurt-Mayn şəhərində yerləşən şirkət icra etmişdir, 1910-cu il [Wasserversorgung der Stadt Baku. Kontrakt No. 1. Verzeichnis C der kombinierten Preise für die Herstellung der Fassung in Schollar und der Zuleitung nach Baku. Frankfurt/M. 1910].

Newspapers sources

»Announcement pursuant to the Resolution of the Committee for the Allocation of Tank Cars.« Bakinskiya Izvestiya, 8. 1. 1887.

»An unsere Leser.« Kaukasische Post, 18. 6. 1906.

Bakinskiya Izvestiya, 1. 2. 1887, 1. 3. 1887, 3. 5. 1887. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/mmnd.48018870102

»Baku, 26 sentyabrya 1881 goda.« Kaspii, 27. 9. 1881. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1881)98[26c:OP]2.0.CO;2

»Baku, 8 noyabrya.» Bakinskiya Izvestiya, 8. 11. 1887.

»Baku v 1912 godu.« Kaspii, 1. 1. 1913.

Kaspii, 17. 5. 1895, 3. 7. 1881, 27. 9. 1881, 1. 1. 1884, 1, 24. 6. 1888, 23. 4. 1894, 3. 10. 1896.

»Kavkazskaya khronika.« Kavkaz, 1. 2. 1900.

»Khronika.« Kaspii, 6. 1. 1884.

»Mestnye izvestiya.« Kaspii, 5. 7. 1881, 15. 7. 1881, 5. 8. 1881, 26. 8. 1881, 2. 9. 1881.

»Mestnaya khronika.« Kaspii, 14, 19. 1. 1911.

»Neftyanoe delo,« Kaspii, 4. 4. 1881; 19. 7. 1881.

»Neftyanoi otdel.« Kaspii, 2. 4. 1910, 14. 4. 1910, 19. 1. 1911, 4. 11. 1911.

»Politische Rundschau. Zur inneren Lage.« Kaukasische Post, 30. 11. 1908.

»The Transcaucasian Railway Administration.» Bakinskiya Izvestiya, 1. 3. 1887.

»Vechernyaya khronika.« Kaspii, 28. 4. 1910. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0145482X1000400105

Printed sources

Bakinskii spravochnyi kalendar’ na 1897. Baku: Aror, 1896.

Markov, Evgenij. Rossiya v Srednei Azii, Ocherki puteshestviya po Zakavkaz’yu, Turkmenii, Bukhare, Samar-kandskoi, Tashkentskoi i Ferganskoi oblastyam, Kaspiiskomu moryu i Volge. Vol. I. S.-Peterburg: Tip. M. M. Stasjulevicha, 1901.

Obzor Bakinskoi gubernii za 1904 god. Prilozhenie ko vsepoddaneishemu otchetu. Baku: Tip. Gubernskogo pravleniya, 1905.

Trudy Bakinskogo otdeleniya Imperatorskogo russkogo tekhnicheskogo obshchestva. Baku: Tip. gazety Kaspiyskoe more, 1886–1914.

Online sources

»Baku i neft’. Period promyshlennoi neftedobychi.« In: Okno v Baku. Accessed 10. 10. 2025. https://www.window2baku.com/oil2.htm.

Literature

A. M. »Neftyanoe delo.« Kaspij, 5. 7. 1881; 10. 7. 1881; 22. 7. 1881.

A. M. »Zavodskie otbrosy i Chernyi gorodok.« Kaspii, 5. 8. 1881, 7. 8. 1881.

Auch, Eva-Maria. Öl und Wein am Kaukasus: deutsche Forschungsreisende, Kolonisten und Unternehmer im vorrevolutionären Aserbaidschan. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2001.

Black, Brian C. Petrolia. The Landscape of America’s First Oil Boom. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Beckert, Sven. Capitalism. A Global History. New York: Penguin Press, 2025.

Braudel, Fernand. Civilization and Capitalism 15th – 18th Century. Vol. 1–3. Trans. Siân Reynolds. Berkley: University of California Press, 1992.

Breyfogle, Nicolas. »Toward an Environmental History of Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.« In: Nicolas Breyfogle, ed. Eurasian Environments. Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russia und Soviet History, 3–20. Pitts-burg: University of Pittsburg Press, Russian and East European Studies, 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv7r41ms.6

Dohrn, Verena. The Kahans from Baku. A Family Saga. Trans. Uri Themal. Boston: Academich Studies Press, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781644697566

Evlakhov, Ivan I. »Nedelya v Baku.« Kavkaz, no. 98, 1861.

Gil’, Rudolf (Rustam K. Aleskerov). Privet iz Baku (arkhivnye dokumenty skvoz’ stoletiya. Baku: Nərgiz nəşriyyatı, 2014.

Gutmeyr, Dominik. »The Oil Boom and the Beginnings of Photography in Imperial Baku.« In: Biljana Ristovska-Josifovska, ed. Migration, Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in Europe and the Black Sea Region until World War I, 319–336. Skopje: Institute of National History, 2021.

Heinrich, Andreas and Heiko Pleines, eds. Challenges of the Caspian Resource Boom. Domestic Elites and Pol-icy-Making. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Hierman, Brent. »Colonial Legacies and Global Networks in Central Asia and the Caucasus.« In: Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism, 635–654. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197527085.013.48

Hobsbawm, Eric. Das lange 19. Jahrhundert. Bd. 2: Das imperiale Zeitalter 1875–1914. Trans. Johann George Scheffner. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2017.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Das lange 19. Jahrhundert. Bd. 3: Die Blütezeit des Kapitals, 1848–1875. Trans. Udo Ren-nert. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2017.

Iriye, Akira and Jürgen Osterhammel, Geschichte der Welt, Bd. 5: 1870–1945. Weltmärkte und Weltkriege. München: Beck, 2018.

McKay, John P. »Restructuring the Russian Petroleum Industry in the 1890s. Government Policy and the Mar-ket Forces.« In: Linda Edmondson and Peter Waldron, eds. Economy and Society in Russia and the Soviet Un-ion, 1860–1930. Essays for Olga Crisp, 85–106. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22433-3_6

McKay, John P. »Entrepreneurship and the emergence of the Russian petroleum industry.« Research in econom-ic history 8 (1983): 47–91.

McNeill, John R. Something New Under the Sun. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Mirbabayev, Miryusif. Concise History of Azerbaijani Oil. Baku: Azerbaijan State Publishing House, 2008.

Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso, 2011.

Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life. Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso, 2015.

Murav’yeva, Ljudmila A. »Ėkonomicheskoe razvitie Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX – nachale XX veka.« Inter-national Accounting 20, no. 21 (2017): 1271–1286.

Pallot, Judith and Denis J. B. Shaw, Landscape and Settlement in Romanov Russia, 1613–1917. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Perovič, Jeronim. Rohstoffmacht Russland. Eine globale Energiegeschichte. Köln: Böhlau, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7788/9783412524449

Peterson, Maya K. Pipe Dreams. Water and Empire in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108673075

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 [1944].

Ross, Corey. Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590414.001.0001

Startsev, Georgiy E. Bakinskaya neftyanaya promyshlennost’: Istoriko-statisticheskii ocherk. Baku: Tipografiya Aror, 1901.

Vassiliou, Marius S. and Mir-Yusif Mir-Babayev, US and Azerbaijani Oil in the nineteenth century. The Two Titans. Lanham: Lexington, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5771/9781793629531

Wedel, Lilija. »Erkundungs- und Abenteuerreisen durch Kaukasus und Zentralasien. Visualisierung und Rezepti-on des Ostens in den 1880er und 1920er Jahren.« In: INDES. Zeitschrift für Politik und Gesellschaft 13, 2/3 (2025): 48–54. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13109/inde.2025.13.2-3.48

Wedel, Lilija. »German Advertisements in the Late Russian Empire as a Reflection of Consumer Policies, Cul-ture, and Communication.» In: Magdalena Eriksroed Burger, Heidi Hein-Kircher and Julia Malitska, eds. Con-sumption and Advertising in Eastern Europe and Russia in the Twentieth Century, 55–81. Cham: Palgrave, 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20204-9_3

Yergin, Daniel. The Prize. The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. London: Simon & Schuster, 1991.