Oil discovered in Nigeria sooner

The gulf states before WW1

At the time of the exploration for oil in persia Iraq was within the ottoman empire. So was Saudi arabia, although control was starting to go.

The rest of the gulf was under proxy British control.
Bahrain was a british protectorate, and had been since the 1820's.
Trucial Oman (now the United Arab Emirates) the same.
Qatar was in theory part of the Ottoman empire, but he ottomans had been beaten in a battle by the Qataris in the 1890's, and after that the jurisdiction was more theoretical than practical. From 1915 it was also a British protectorate (note the date - before wars end).
Kuwait wa defined in an anglo-ottoman convention in 1913 as a governership within the ottoman empire. The fact that the british were involved in this agreement shows where the power lay.
By 1922 it was within the british sphere.

All of these states could have had exporation for oil before WW1 or just after instead of Persia. The political environment was better for the british than persia, and as these are all islands or on the coast getting the oil exported would be easier.
 
and the populations are alot smaller so even if there was a resistance eventually then it might actually be managed. So in hindsight persian oil exploitation as the first one in the middle east by the british was kind of a mistake.

Also you could bribe them into the empire if the oil was important enough ?
 
I also wonder if a 1910 discovery might butterfly the formation of Nigeria as we know it - the north was separate prior to 1914, and Lagos had only recently been joined to the Niger Coast Protectorate. Maybe, if oil is found, the British government would want to break the Niger Coast protectorate off again so that the oil fields could be administered more locally and efficiently. This separate colony would essentially be Biafra avant la lettre, and would be a potentially rich state after independence. In the meantime, the merger between the north and Lagos might be stalled by the fact that the northern peoples would be a large majority of the new colony - this might not matter so much to Lugard, but it would certainly be a point of contention later in colonial history, and could result in the Yoruba and Edo territories becoming independent sooner than and separately from the north.

Anyone have any maps from this time?
 
Port Harcourt would become a more economically important city than Lagos, although it may be too new and raw to become the administrative capital. There would also be rivalry between Igbos and the Niger Delta peoples for jobs in the oil industry, possibly leading to more Igbo possessiveness and more delta separatism later on.

I also wonder if a 1910 discovery might butterfly the formation of Nigeria as we know it - the north was separate prior to 1914, and Lagos had only recently been joined to the Niger Coast Protectorate. Maybe, if oil is found, the British government would want to break the Niger Coast protectorate off again so that the oil fields could be administered more locally and efficiently. This separate colony would essentially be Biafra avant la lettre, and would be a potentially rich state after independence. In the meantime, the merger between the north and Lagos might be stalled by the fact that the northern peoples would be a large majority of the new colony - this might not matter so much to Lugard, but it would certainly be a point of contention later in colonial history, and could result in the Yoruba and Edo territories becoming independent sooner than and separately from the north.

That depends on how the British see the value of oil. In 1910 oil was relatively cheap but it would have made the colony more profitable. The driver for the merger IOTL was the fiscal drag the North had on the South - the South even without oil effectively subsidizes the North.

I suspect oil would have made the logic even stronger.

If the consequence was that most of the effort by William D'Arcy was in Nigeria and not Persia we might not see the British entanglement in Persia and Iraq to anything like the same extent.

A stronger British control of Nigerian oil might translate into more development funds becoming available for Nigeria and a faster development of the countries infrastructure and possibly government services. A more rigorous British control of the civil service in the early years of oil development might reduce the chances of revenue leakage later on as well.
 
Been re-reading Daniel Yergin's 'The Prize', have got to the D'Arcy concession and it seems the Foreign Office were very worried that a failure by the D'Arcy concession would allow the Russians to pick up something and potentially allow Russian developments that threatened India.

Its suspected oil in in Iran so if D'Arcy doesn't try for it and Russia does it may prompt a reaction from the UK to cause Russia problems.
 
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