Let me start by saying that I am a person who instinctively believes that international politics and economical dealings are filled with backdoor deals, self-interest and absolute disregard for common good and decency. A person with such attitude should be a prime target for the grand conspiracy theory presented in this book. Unfortunately for Engdahl, I have also been a student of history for over 25 years and I can say with some certainty that this book is a pile of stinking crap.

Every cardinal error a historian can make can also be found in this book. Presentation of conclusions without a shred of supporting evidence, wild allegations, distortion of facts alternatively omission of facts when that approach suits author's purpose better, factual mistakes and plain lies - this book is riddled with all of those.

Furthermore, name of Lyndon LaRouche comes up quite often in "Century of War". This fact is important because vast majority of so called "references" Engdahl uses to support his fantasies for post-war period turn out to be publications from one of LaRouche's publishing houses. A quick investigation discloses that Engdahl and LaRouche are close buddies and exposes LaRouche as a complete fruitcake. This book consists to a large degree of conspiracy theories this man fabricated over the years. So please, before you pick up this book, do yourself a favor and do a little of your own research about those two gentlemen. If what you find out discourages you from wasting your time on this horrid collection of fantasies, good for you. If you decide to read it anyway... well, you've been warned.

A History of Imperial Plunder Disguised as Strategy

F. William Engdahl’s A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order is a devastating exposé of how British and American elites have used oil as the central weapon in a centuries-long campaign of neocolonial domination. The book meticulously documents how these powers have manipulated global events, orchestrated coups, and waged wars under the guise of economic development, democracy, and stability—all to secure their grip over the world’s energy resources.

From the early days of the British Empire’s stranglehold over Middle Eastern oil to the United States’ post-World War II economic and military expansion, Engdahl provides a compelling argument that Western imperialism never ended—it simply evolved into a more sophisticated form. He draws clear parallels between traditional colonialism and modern financial warfare, where military interventions, economic sabotage, and political assassinations have become the tools of empire.

To fully appreciate the scope of Anglo-American neocolonialism, Engdahl’s analysis can be compared to the strategic theories of Halford John Mackinder, the British geopolitical thinker who conceptualized the “Heartland Theory,” and Niccolò Machiavelli, the Renaissance strategist who wrote extensively on power, deception, and the ruthless pursuit of dominance. When viewed through their lenses, the story Engdahl tells is not just about oil—it is about the fundamental nature of power and the lengths to which empires will go to maintain it.


The British Blueprint: Oil and the Empire’s Lifeline

The Anglo-Persian Oil Conspiracy

Britain’s early control over oil was no accident. As Engdahl details, Winston Churchill made a calculated decision to shift the Royal Navy from coal to oil before World War I, ensuring that Britain’s global dominance would depend on its ability to secure petroleum reserves. The British Empire soon established complete control over Persian (Iranian) oil through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP). This was done not through fair trade or negotiation, but through classic colonial exploitation.

When Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh dared to nationalize the country’s oil in 1951, the British, backed by the Americans, orchestrated a coup (Operation Ajax) in 1953, installing the Shah as their puppet. Engdahl describes how this move was not just about Iran, but about sending a clear message to all developing nations: any attempt to claim sovereignty over natural resources would be met with economic sabotage and military intervention.

Mackinder’s Heartland Theory (1904) argued that controlling the central landmass of Eurasia was key to global dominance. The British and Americans applied this logic by ensuring that Middle Eastern oil fields, situated near this heartland, remained under Western control. Iran, strategically positioned between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf, was too important to be left to its own devices.

Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532) provides further insight into British strategy. He famously wrote that when taking control of a territory, a ruler must either “pamper or destroy” the people. The British and Americans followed this rule religiously—leaders who complied were rewarded with wealth and power, while those who resisted were overthrown or assassinated.

America Takes the Baton: The Oil Dollar Empire

The Post-WWII Financial Order: Petrodollar Hegemony

After World War II, America replaced Britain as the primary global empire, and oil became the lifeblood of its financial system. Engdahl explains how the 1944 Bretton Woods system initially tied global finance to the gold-backed U.S. dollar, giving America enormous economic leverage. However, by 1971, Nixon abandoned the gold standard, replacing it with the petrodollar system—where oil exports were priced exclusively in dollars, forcing all nations to hold U.S. currency to purchase energy.

This was a masterstroke of economic warfare. Through deals with Saudi Arabia and OPEC, Washington ensured that every barrel of oil sold worldwide reinforced the U.S. financial system. Any nation that resisted was either financially strangled or bombed into submission.

Consider Iraq: Saddam Hussein made the fatal mistake of attempting to sell oil in euros instead of dollars in 2000. By 2003, he was overthrown in a U.S. invasion under the fabricated pretense of weapons of mass destruction. Engdahl connects this invasion directly to the petrodollar system—America was not defending democracy but securing its global financial hegemony.

Similarly, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi attempted to introduce the gold-backed dinar as a new African currency, threatening the dollar’s dominance. NATO promptly intervened in 2011, and Gaddafi was brutally executed. Engdahl highlights this as yet another example of American imperialism cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric.

Machiavelli’s principle that a ruler must eliminate rivals before they become too powerful is evident here. The U.S. followed his teachings to the letter—destroying any leader who posed a genuine threat to its control.

Corporate Colonialism: The New Face of Empire

IMF, World Bank, and Economic Hitmen

Direct military intervention is expensive and politically risky, so the U.S. and Britain perfected a more insidious form of control: economic warfare through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Engdahl details how these institutions operate like financial hitmen, offering loans to developing nations with conditions that ensure permanent dependence.

Countries are forced to privatize their industries, deregulate their economies, and open their markets to Western corporations. As a result, wealth is siphoned out of these nations while their governments remain trapped in perpetual debt. If leaders refuse to comply, as seen in the cases of Ecuador’s Jaime Roldós and Panama’s Omar Torrijos, they often die in mysterious plane crashes.

Mackinder’s vision of a world controlled through strategic resource domination plays out here as well. Rather than using direct occupation, the West ensures control by keeping nations in a state of economic servitude, unable to challenge the global order.

Conclusion: A Century of Deception and Bloodshed

Engdahl’s A Century of War is a brutal yet necessary indictment of Anglo-American neocolonialism. It reveals a world where democracy and human rights are mere facades, concealing a ruthless system of global exploitation. From Iran in 1953 to Iraq in 2003, from economic hit jobs in Latin America to NATO’s destruction of Libya, the pattern remains consistent: eliminate leaders who resist, install puppet regimes, and ensure that the oil and financial systems remain firmly in Western hands.

By comparing these events with the theories of Mackinder and Machiavelli, the picture becomes even clearer. Anglo-American imperialists have not acted randomly or out of short-term greed; they have followed a carefully designed geopolitical strategy rooted in control, deception, and ruthless efficiency. Oil has been the key instrument, but the underlying game is far more insidious—permanent global dominance through a combination of military power, financial warfare, and psychological manipulation.

This is not a story of progress or stability. It is a story of organized plunder, where nations are raped, leaders are assassinated, and populations are kept in check—all so that the Anglo-American elite can maintain their empire of wealth and power. Engdahl’s work should serve as a wake-up call: the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries were never about democracy. They were about oil, money, and empire.

Listed among the promotional blurbs on the back cover are a former oil minister from Saudi Arabia, an MIT school of management fellow, and the former minister of Guyana, giving an indication that Engdahl has more credibility than much of the other conspiratorial literature out there. Make no mistake though, Engdahl is firmly in the camp of new world order theory proponents; that a global totalitarian government is being covertly created by a small, mostly Anglo-American elite. A cursory look at the titles of his other works will confirm this, and at times Engdahl makes overreaching and questionable conclusions in 'A Century of War.' For example, he maintains that the spiritual counterculture of the 1960's was encouraged by members of the elite to destabilize American industry. What this book offers is an alternative, behind the scenes history of the 20th century. Engdahl makes a convincing case that with the transition from coal to oil powered industry, strategic control of oil has been a dominant factor of most major global conflicts well before the first gulf war. This includes both world wars, but also countless other conflicts, coups, assasinations, financial market manipulations, and other instruments of control and power. Some of the more hard hitting allegations Engdhal makes include that the OPEC oil embargos were deliberately planned by Anglo-American interests with one purpose being to ensnare and exploit developing countries with exploding levels of debt. He also argues that ever since the US gold standard was dropped by Nixon, the US has tacitly forced the rest of the world to accept the dollar as the world reserve currency by controling the global oil supply. This is a well researched, much needed, and deeply procative work that will generously reward readers looking to better understand what is really taking place as opposed to the 'official' version of history approved and propagated by the corporate controlled media.

I lost this book half-way through, but holy shit was it good.

Početak 20. stoljeća: Britanija je bila carstvo u kojem sunce nikada ne zalazi. Kako se dogodilo da su se geopolitičke karte preslagale nekoliko puta u prošlom stoljeću? Svako preslagivanje moći i utjecaja onih koji su je imali u velikom opsegu, uslijedilo bi nakon krvavih ratova, izmeđuostalog i dva svjetska.

Najradije bih počeo recenziju od činjenice da je Rudolf Diesel izumio novi stroj koji se pokreće na naftne prerađevine. Zašto je ovo bitno? Britanija je bila ranije spomenuto carstvo, upravo zbog svoje ratne flote koja je mogla reagirati strateškom prednošću bilo gdje u svijetu. Zamislite stare "vapore" koji su bili pokretani stapnim parnim strojevima, zamislite koliko je ljudi trebalo opsluživati samo rad motora i zamislite ugljen kojim je trebalo postići temperaturu da bi ti strojevi s vanjskim izgaranjem mogli raditi. Uzmimo ratni brod, njegovu autonomnost, količinu ljudstva, goleme zapremine samo za ugalj i kotlove... Zar je čudno da je Rudolf Diesel nestao na brodu koji je išao u Britaniju 1913. godine?

Bilo kako bilo, nafta kao energent je postala prioritet od najvišeg interesa. Autor dokumentirano pripovjeda o ratovima u prošlom stoljeću te silnicama koje su ih pokretale, gotovo sve iz interesa najjačih svjetskih sila. Ako niste čitali, a mislite da znate nešto o geopolitici i geostrategiji, odmah ću vam preporučiti Engdahla.

Excellent Summary of the History of the 20th century related to oil geopolitics

Tells it like it was

Some parts are quite "fantabulous "; i.e. The bit about "Friends of the Earth and the Ecology movement being set up by big Oil, and Kissinger and company organizing the Fuel Crisis of 1973-74..
But overall, and interesting read that succeeded in the author's stated purposes at the beginning ...asking oneself questions about the plausibilities of claims made in the book.

Starts well enough

Yes England and her damned ambitions gold and oil drove the carnage of over two centuries of needless war.
But those idiots in charge after ww2 were lucky to end up with a matching pair of socks from day-to-day,to imagine that uncontrolled events instead of otherwise is a step too far.

hard to imagine that all those connections and practices can all be based on the greed on oil and power (where oil = power). No one has the proof that all these theories are really true. but when you read it, it makes perfect times. First worldwar, second worldwar... there seems to be a time-piece missing in the book though. Maybe the author had to leave it out?? Very haunting.

A truly wortwhile work with a very decent factual base. The only downside is concentrating solely on geopolitics (almost without examining the nature of capitalism and economic crisises per se) and US/GB role in some events and conflicts. Still, a must-have for all interested in modern history.

You won’t know what to believe anymore after reading this book. It’s an insane but compelling economic history of the exploitation of the world under the guise of national strategy. It’s a treasure chest for the conspiracy theorist. Perhaps it should be subtitled:
“And that’s why they hate us.” Engdahl has some far fetched accusations as he strings his economic history of the exploitation of oil by the Anglo-Americans. He indulges in guilt by association but he connects the dots in a compelling manner. This is in the style of Howard Zinn as an expose that makes you feel ashamed to have a government like ours. If the Tea Party is trying to take the country back, well I’ve got news for them, we the people have never had the country, period. And if you’re trying to buy this book, good luck finding it. That sort of proves Engdahl’s point too, I guess.

It's ok.