The battle for Baku (May‐September 1918): a peculiar episode in the history of the caucasus

Abstract

The city of Baku and surrounding area is one of the best-known oil regions in the world. Exploitation by collection from springs and shallow pits was well noticed in the earliest historical records. A considerable commerce was carried on in the area, supplying oil for cooking and medicinal purposes. During the nineteenth century, the Tsarist government envisioned the modem petroleum industry when it drilled a well for oil at what is now the giant BibiEibat field. It was the end of the nineteenth century before the area had its first contact with the Western capital. The rich oil potential in the region attracted influential foreign companies. By the late nineteenth century, two competing families came to control Baku's oil industry. The Swedish Nobel brothers arrived on the scene first to be followed by the French branch of the Rothschild family. In 1898 Russia became the largest oil-producing country, and held this position until 1902. At the beginning of the twentieth century, more than 50 per cent of the world's oil was produced in the Baku region. Baku, a town with a population of 2,500 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, emerged as an industrial and commercial centre with a thriving population rising to 200,000 at the end of the century. The rush to Baku was driven by the discovery of rich oil resources. Railways soon followed to transport the material wealth to and fro. The Batum-Baku railway construction opened the way for a big harbour and, consequently, Baku was by 1918 at the centre of an ever important transit route between Russia, Iran and Central Asia via the Caspian Sea. When the Bolshevik Revolution started in Russia in November 1917' the First World War was already approaching its fourth year. Although the Russian armies had controlled the regions of Transcaucasia and part of eastern Anatolia since 1916, on the European borders of Russia control was in the hands of the Central Powers. The armies of Germany and AustroHungary had invaded Russian Poland and had reached the borders of the