In 2016, as a novice graduate student delving into the serpentine history of hydrocarbon extraction in southern Iran, I encountered one of my earliest and most daunting research challenges: accessing primary source materials. The vast majority of existing texts and historiographical accounts about these geographies are derived from British historical archives — documents that had already been interpreted and renarrativized by others. While these secondary sources were undoubtedly valuable, they fell short of fulfilling my goal: to capture the dispositions, desires, and fears shaping the complex human geography of Iran’s oil-rich regions. I wanted to “shake hands with the subjects of history,” but with secondary sources as my sole window into their world, I felt as if I were merely eavesdropping on them from an adjacent room.
Around that time, I encountered the seminal work of the Subaltern Studies Collective, particularly Ranajit Guha’s call for counter-archival work.1 Guha proposed the methodology of reading for lack, absences, and effacement in colonial archives as a way to decode the official colonial narratives through which imperial powers addressed — and often suppressed — peasant livelihoods and dissent.2 Inspired by this approach and with the support of my department, I traveled to the UK’s National Archives in London to engage directly with the relevant records. Reading these documents against the grain of their colonial logic and integrating insights from three months of fieldwork in Ahvaz and Abadan later that year, I began to reanimate these materials in ways that informed my first ficto-critical novella, Prizes from Fairyland.3
One of my most peculiar discoveries in the archives was a detailed layout for smoke screens in Abadan. This “most secret” document, labeled for military purposes, outlines an elaborate plan for shielding the Abadan refinery from aerial threats by burning hundreds of tons of imported Indian cotton in advance of incoming attacks from the sky.
At first glance, the precision of these diagrams speaks to a cold, calculated approach to protecting oil infrastructure as a strategic asset. Yet I couldn’t help but think of the lived experiences of those beneath these smoke screens when they were fired up for scheduled drills. How did the denizens of Abadan perceive these defensive measures? Were they made aware of the plans in advance? Were they, too, veiled — reduced to a footnote within the military logic of oil “protection”? The document is both methodical and indifferent, evoking questions of visibility and invisibility in how we narrate hydrocarbons.
Even from my relatively privileged position as a Canadian passport holder and a funded graduate student with access to academic journals, databases, and archives, gaining access to these documents was a significant challenge. Over the following months and years, I discussed these difficulties with like-minded researchers and friends, particularly those based in Iran and other Majority-World contexts. They described prohibitive financial and bureaucratic barriers that restricted their access to the knowledge centers housed in the former colonial metropoles of Europe.
As a small gesture of solidarity, I am sharing approximately 700 pages of digitized records with readers of this forum. These records, organized into fourteen folios, span a range of themes, including early Foreign Office communications about the D’Arcy concession, labor and emigration discussions, Admiralty studies on the inner workings of the Abadan refinery, and a variety of War Office memoranda concerning the protection (and potential destruction) of oil infrastructure in southern Iran.
The records documenting the “oil denial” strategies for the Abadan refinery — plans to demolish its tank farms in case of military threat or “local aggression” — are chilling. Pages of diagrams meticulously lay out the logistics for systematic destruction, reducing oil infrastructure to a collection of labeled targets. What struck me most, however, was the accompanying timetable (above, far right).
The table delineates the demolition sequence across eight tanks, organized into precise hours and minutes — each line a calculated decision to obliterate. Reading this, I imagined the workers who built and maintained these tanks, likely unaware of how their labor might be undone in mere minutes. To think that destruction itself could be _scheduled, down to the last second, exposes the sheer violence that underpins oil’s strategic value._
How do we reconcile the inherent contradiction of oil infrastructure as both a lifeblood and a liability? These documents reminded me of the immense precarity of the economies, bodies, and lives so intimately tethered to such extractive geographies.
Iran’s political landscape and modernity were shaped not only in Tehran’s halls of power but also in distant European metropoles — and, crucially, in Iran’s border geographies along the Persian Gulf, Caspian Sea, and Aras River. When read as a counterpoint to the singular, totalizing accounts of nationalist Iranian historiography, these records offer a nuanced foundation for understanding the dynamic interplay between centers of power and the long-term, often overlooked inhabitants of oil geographies in southern Iran.
Perhaps the most haunting folio I encountered was the Report on the Destruction of Water (April 15, 1942). The typed pages detail methods for “polluting” wells and sabotaging water supplies to deny resources to supposed foes, be it foreign actors or those locals deemed adversarial. While ostensibly a military strategy, the document’s diagrams (center and right) offer detailed blueprints for long-term environmental devastation. Water’s destruction ripples across human and nonhuman lives in ways that outlast immediate conflicts.
I could not ignore the weight of these instructions in the context of southern Iran’s arid landscapes, where access to water is already fraught. I could not fathom how many communities’ livelihoods have been devastated simply as collateral damage in the course of what we call the “history of oil.” The archival language here is mechanical, but in contrast, our human response to it is quite visceral. These reports force us to grapple with the enduring environmental legacies of imperial statecraft. Oil extraction is never just about oil; it is always a matter of reordering entire ecologies.
The ways these documents can be contextualized and interpreted are manifold. I must acknowledge the limitations of my own scholarly and artistic approach to reanimating these archives. My hope is that other researchers and storytellers will find value in these materials, using them to spark creative, collaborative, and critical discussions about the violent histories accompanying extractive hydrocarbon economies and their enduring impacts on human lives and livelihoods.
By revisiting these archival geographies — through maps, reports, and diagrams — I invite readers to not only see the documents but also to feel their weight: to consider the hands that created them, the lives they affected, and the stories they still hold.
Instructions for destruction of water sources in case of foreign invasion or local uprising
Letters and images form a British sailor aboard AIOC tanker visiting Abadan
Misc. foreign department communciation with and regarding AIOC 1909 onwards
Misc. notes on port operations and oiler instructions in Abadan
Proposal to build UK consulate in Ahwaz with support of Sheikh Khazaal
Schemes for protection of oil fields against local aggression
Schemes for the smoke screens of Abadan in case of aerial attack
All images courtesy of the author.
1 Ranajit Guha and James Scott, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Duke University Press, 1999).
2 Ibid. 16-17
3 Rouzbeh Akhbari, Prizes from Fairyland (pub. by author, 2018).
Rouzbeh Akhbari, “Revisiting Oil Geographies: Archival Challenges and Collaborative Possibilities,” in mohit.art NOTES #15 (February/March 2025); published on www.mohit.art, January 31, 2025.
