Papers presented by Rob Konkel since 2019

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"How to Build a Bloc: Strategic Minerals and Interwar Quests for Autonomy and Autarky"

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This paper examines business rivalries over scarce raw materials in the age of total war. Mineral resources were sources of economic and political power, forming key components of the interwar “raw materials problem,” which stemmed from the uneven distribution of, and access to, the world’s resources. Little-studied, but critically important, alloying minerals like tungsten and manganese were needed only in small amounts, but they were essential to the very foundations of national prosperity and security—steel and military production. Herein lay a fundamental problem: none of the industrial powers possessed adequate domestic deposits of these minerals, which were concentrated in remote locations—like central India, the Caucasus, southern China, Brazilian jungles, and southern Africa. In a world in which steel was power, resource anxieties motivated interwar quests for autarky and autonomy among both state and business interests. The realities and dangers of resource interdependence pushed businesspeople and state officials toward “bloc thinking”—strategies dreamed up to organize and consolidate self-contained, self-sufficient blocs of territory and trade networks to circumvent the dangers of interdependence. This paper explores case studies of interwar market actors in the steel industry, and how their rivalries and anxieties over access to strategic minerals contributed to interwar bloc-building. Commercial units and industrialists sought to protect their positions by stockpiling key inputs, researching synthetics or possible substitutions, integrating their operations, acquiring foreign firms and concessions, coordinating markets with other firms via cartels, forging long-term government contracts, and harnessing the power of the state to protect their foreign and domestic interests. Companies and industrial associations like Metallgesellschaft, Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), Wah Chang Trading Company, and the Comité des Forges all pursued these strategies to achieve “raw materials freedom” in a blocifying world.

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

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2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"Building Blocs: Raw Materials and the Global Economy in the Age of Disequilibrium"

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“Building Blocs” centers strategic minerals in a global history of trade, finance, and geopolitics between the World Wars. Minerals were key components of the interwar "raw materials problem," which stemmed from the uneven distribution of, and access to, the world's resources. Modern industry required steady supplies of tungsten, manganese, and chrome for steel and military production, but none of the industrialized powers possessed domestic deposits. Drawing on the archives of states, corporations, banks, and international organizations, I show how entangled business and state interests pushed alternative solutions to multilateralism, carving out spheres of influence as international cooperation disintegrated. I argue that rivalries and anxieties generated by resource interdependence not only drove the creation of interwar trading blocs, but also shaped the forms and structures of post-1945 geopolitical entities and international institutions.

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2022 Mexico City

"Combine and Conquer: Managing Colonial Resource Security in the Age of Disequilibrium"

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This paper analyzes the post-WWI boom and bust in a wider temporal context, centering anxieties over manganese access. Little-studied, but critically important, manganese was an essential ingredient for steelmaking, but none of the industrial powers possessed suitable domestic deposits. Scholars have emphasized the problem of glut, as wartime production created supplies which outstripped peacetime demand. I reframe the problem in terms of access. The collapse of currency stability and closure of credit markets spelled doom for primary product producers—not only because there was less demand for their products, but because consumers lacked the means and facilities to acquire them. For major steelmakers, despite the accumulation of mineral stocks, the material shortages endured during WWI and memories of the blockade had cemented the need to secure sustained access to strategic mineral resources unavailable at home. Minerals like manganese can help highlight how mineral geoeconomics and interdependence between the World Wars shaped foreign and commercial relations, by showing how firms, states, and colonial governments adopted different strategies to navigate post-war disequilibrium. Using the Central Provinces of India Manganese Ore Company (CPMOC) as a case study, I examine how its directors navigated post-war bottlenecks, price and production dislocation, and new competition. Facing deteriorating mining conditions, CPMOC’s directors tried to drum up more business with promises of new transport infrastructure, lowered freight rates, and investments in extractive efficiency—all of which were contingent on obtaining new, long-term contracts. For CPMOC’s directors, new American tariffs on manganese imports, W. Averell Harriman’s new Soviet manganese concession, and upstarts in South Africa and the Gold Coast created inauspicious conditions for winning new business. Muddling through the crisis, CPMOC’s directors eventually sought out stability amid the disequilibria through an imperial combination with British smelting industries. This paper plots their strategy into global, structural geopolitical and economic conditions.

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2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform

"Caught in Webs of Credit: Corporations and Resource Interdependence after the First World War"

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Between the World Wars, industrialized economies worried about securing access to scarce, strategic metallic minerals for their blast furnaces. Memories of the material shortages endured during WWI created anxieties about resource exhaustion and scarcity, cementing an enduring vision of a world of finite raw materials controlled by a small number of great powers. This paper covers the post-WWI economic boom and bust through the lens of manganese markets. Mineral resources were a source of economic and political power. Little-studied, but critically important, minerals like manganese were only needed in small amounts, but they were essential to the foundations of national prosperity and security—steel and military production. But all major steelmakers depended completely on imports of manganese ores, which were scattered around the world and concentrated in remote locations. This paper analyzes state and corporate efforts to stimulate, resurrect, and control manganese mining industries in the USA, Soviet Union, Gold Coast, South Africa, India, and Australia. I use this case study to explicate mineral geoeconomics and interdependence during the post-WWI period. The war had stimulated production of otherwise uneconomic manganese ore deposits on the one hand, creating disequilibria in the peacetime market. But on the other hand, the dangers of resource interdependence prompted state- and business-led efforts to systematically survey foreign territories to discover and develop new mineral sources. I show how multinational steel and smelting companies went abroad during this time to secure political and commercial control over these vital mineral inputs, despite market volatility. Drawing on state, corporate, bank, and organizational archives, I show how the expression of US power in the world grew out of imbricated private- and public-sector anxieties over access to foreign resources.

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