Striking it rich
BÜLENT GÖKAY applauds a lovingly crafted life of an oil baron whose restless business manoeuvres shaped our modern world
Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian, the World’s Richest Man By Jonathan Conlin Profile Books, 416 pages, £25
Calouste Gulbenkian was an Anglo-Armenian oil magnate and the guardian of a historic collection of art, antiquities and sculpture – the largest collection of art ever owned by one person. Gulbenkian helped establish the oil majors we know today as Royal Dutch Shell and Total, and personally owned 5 per cent of Middle East oil production – hence his nickname: ‘Mr Five Per Cent’. Taking this memorable moniker as its title, this new volume from Jonathan Conlin – a cultural historian at Southampton University – re-examines Gulbenkian’s complex private and public life.
Published on the 150th anniversary of the oil magnate’s birth, Conlin’s biography is a business history that not only strips away many obscure myths surrounding this enigmatic figure, but also explains in a clear and scholarly way how this business architect shaped our modern hydrocarbon economy.
Gulbenkian was born in the capital of the Ottoman empire, Constantinople, in 1869. His father was an oil importer/ exporter who sent him to study petroleum engineering at King’s College London. In 1889, he visited Russia to examine the oil industry at Baku before fleeing to Egypt in 1896 in the aftermath of the Hamidian massacres (of Armenians in the Ottoman empire). It was in Cairo that Gulbenkian forged influential business contacts with the Armenian oil magnate Alexander Mantashev and banking heir Sir Evelyn Baring. In 1902, Gulbenkian became a naturalised British citizen and five years later was involved in the merger that resulted in the creation of Royal Dutch/Shell, of which he was a major shareholder.
In 1911, he was the driving force behind the creation of the Turkish Petroleum Company, a consortium of the largest European oil companies aimed at cooperatively securing exploration and development rights in Iraq, then under Ottoman rule. Gulbenkian put together the oil alliance between the British, Dutch, German and Ottoman empires, managing to hold it together through two world wars. After dividing his time between London and Paris, in 1942 he relocated to Lisbon, capital of neutral Portugal,
Many obscure myths surround this enigmatic figure
where he lived until his death in 1955.
Calouste Gulbenkian is a compelling but also demanding subject, his life an interesting and widely discussed topic. Conlin’s book, lovingly researched and crafted with skill, constitutes the most recent interpretation, from which I learned a lot. This book pulls off a double success: academic researchers will enjoy and be inspired by it, while general readers will appreciate its clarity and concision. While there are other books written about the extraordinary life of Calouste Gulbenkian, none come close to matching this volume.