The 1951 Oil Nationalization is undoubtedly one of the keystones of the history of Iranian oil, if not the history of Iran. The historiography of modern Iran has emphasized three main events that bring forth the question of the agency of the people. These are the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1907, the Nationalization of Oil of 1951 and the Revolution of 1979. Taken together with the national and international structural factors that ripened the conditions for these transformative moments, inter and intra-class relations are problematized in as much as they take part in these moments. The class and group interests of the people are taken as dormant factors, awakened in the making of these events.
Studying the archival materials of BP, the British National Archives, Washington National Archives and Records Administration, the Iranian National Archives and the narratives of individual workers, this paper scrutinizes the inter and intra class relations of the oil workers of Iran between these two important moments. The continuities and ruptures in these relations will be studied with respect to the changes in the living and working conditions of the oil workers. It is aimed to understand the mechanism of the power relations within the oil producing community and their link with the processes that build up to the making of these historical events. It is argued that the “war of position” in the everyday life of the workers in these much less studied years of “interlude” has been effective in the making of these main events of the modern history of Iran and that the power relations that this war of position has led to have been reflected in the making of these moments.
