The Company and the Crown: Oil, Capital, and the Dual Mandate in Palestine

This article examines how the intertwined operations of empire and oil capital shaped the British Mandate in Palestine. It argues that the ‘dual Mandate’, formulated by Frederick Lugard and institutionalised through the League of Nations, should be understood not only as an ideological justification for colonialism that claims to balance imperial profit with native welfare but also as a structural tension between the British state and British oil companies. In Palestine, this duality took material form in a political-corporate regime in which both the colonial state and British-dominated oil firms – such as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Iraq Petroleum Company – exercised territorial, legal, and economic power. The article shows that Palestine’s integration into global oil networks was inseparable from Mandate governance: oil not only informed the discourse of the ‘dual Mandate’ but also structured a dual system of rule. It traces how this configuration reshaped spatial and social hierarchies, defining the Mandate’s borders and remoulding the Zionist-Palestinian struggle. While recent scholarship has explored the role of joint-stock companies, concessionary firms, and development ideas in shaping colonialism and resistance, this study is the first to examine how oil corporations were pivotal in structuring the legal, financial, territorial, and political contours of the Palestine Mandate.