Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary

Making peace and reorganizing a world in shambles required swift action. As the defeated Ottoman Empire was dismembered, Britain asserted influence in Mesopotamia, believing that it held oil potential. France had a historic claim to Mosul and was willing to exchange it for control over neighboring Syria and a share in Mosul's oil profits. Before the war, Deutsche Bank had vied with APOC for a Mesopotamian concession, but in 1912 transferred its claims to the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), which was half owned by the British-controlled Turkish National Bank TNB and shared with RDSG. An Armenian millionaire, Calouste Gulbenkian, had put this deal together. A second-generation oil man, Gulbenkian had been educated in France and England and sent by his father to Baku, where he earned a reputation writing about oil. He was a master of trading and dealing, information gathering, patience...