Debunking Myths on the Saudi Oil Frontier
March 2007
In his latest book, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Front, Robert Vitalis takes an in-depth look at the myths that surround the United States’ “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia. Conventional histories cast American businessmen as missionaries who helped build a nation while building a powerful oil-based economy in Saudi Arabia. Vitalis, an associate professor of political science and director of the Middle East Center, shows that this “miracle in the desert” was in reality a “deal” that exchanged oil for security. Oil and the Arabian American Oil Company quickly became America’s largest single overseas private enterprise.
Vitalis argues that in the 1930s and 1940s ARAMCO officials implemented a Jim Crow system over the Dhahran oil camps, reminiscent of company towns that exploited oil workers in California, Venezuela and Mexico in the 19th century. Arab workers from over a dozen counties were assembled to operate rigs and build the refinery as well as stores and housing for American managers and their families. The story, informed by first-hand accounts from ARAMCO employees and top government officials, covers more than 70 years of history and overturns earlier, more benign accounts of U.S.-Saudi relations.