Per Högselius

The making of Europe’s critical infrastructure : Common connections and shared vulnerabilities

The Making of Europes Critical Infrastructure : Common Connections and Shared Vulnerabilities

Natural Gas in Cold War Europe: The Making of a Critical Infrastructure

On January 1, 2006, Russian gas company Gazprom hastily decided to interrupt its delivery of natural gas to neighboring Ukraine. During a few dramatic days the Russian move raised concerns in large parts of Europe, since the interruption to Ukraine also had a direct effect on the gas supply to countries located further downstream the same pipeline. On January 2, gas companies in Hungary Slovakia, and Austria reported a drastic drop in pressure — at a time of peak winter demand for natural gas. The crisis threatened the steady supply of electricity and heat to a vast number of industrial enterprises, power plants, hospitals, schools, households, and other gas users.

Swedish Explorers, In-Situ Knowledge, and Resource-Based Business in the Age of Empire

The period from 1870 to 1914 plays a unique role in the history of natural resource exploration and extraction. This article analyses, from a Swedish viewpoint, the connections between two actor categories of special importance in this context: scientific-geographical explorers and industrial actors. The article examines their activities in three broadly defined regions: the Arctic, Russia, and Africa. We show that the Swedes generally had far-reaching ambitions, on par with those of the large imperial powers. In some cases, notably in Africa, Sweden was not able to compete with the larger imperial powers; but in other cases, such as the exploration of the Arctic – from Spitsbergen to Siberia – and the industrial exploitation of coal at Spitsbergen and petroleum in Russia’s colonial periphery, Swedish actors played a leading role, in competition with players from the larger European nations. Our paper shows that scientific exploration and industry were closely linked, and that foreign policy also influenced the shaping of these links. We distinguish different types of knowledge produced by the Swedish actors, pointing to local, situated knowledge as the most important type for many resource-based businesses, although modern, scientific knowledge was on the increase during this period.

Swedish steel and global resource colonialism: Sandviken’s quest for Turkish chromium, 1925–1950

ABSTRACT This article analyses Swedish industry’s attempts to secure strategic raw materials in an era of global resource colonialism. More precisely, it tells the story of how Sandvikens Jernverk – a leading Swedish steel producer – set out to secure its need for chromium ore during the Interwar Era. Up to the late 1920s, Sandviken sourced its chromium from British and French colonies. However, the company feared the British Empire’s growing dominance in the global chromium ore market. In 1928, then, Sandviken joined forces with several other Swedish steel producers, forming a consortium that, with ample help from Swedish foreign policy actors, managed to establish an independent source of chromium ore in Turkey. This project, however, which took the form of an Istanbul-based mining company, made big losses and was abandoned after only a few years. The project failed because of changes in the world chromium market, the global economic crisis, conflicts with the company’s Turkey-based managing director and the Swedish reluctance to scale up mining in such a way that the chromium ore might compete with Rhodesian, New Caledonian and Baluchistani ore.

The Decay of Communism: Managing Spent Nuclear Fuel in the Soviet Union, 1937-1991

The aim of this article is to explore the dynamics of spent nuclear fuel management in the Soviet Union, from the origins of nuclear engineering in the 1930s to the collapse of the country in 1991. ...

Europe’s Critical Infrastructure and Its Vulnerabilities: Promises, Problems, Paradoxes

Critical infrastructure (CI) can be damaged, destroyed, or disrupted by deliberate acts of terrorism, natural disasters, negligence, accidents, computer hacking, criminal activity, and malicious behaviour. To save the lives and property of people at risk in the EU [European Union]… any disruptions or manipulations of CI should, to the extent possible, be brief, infrequent, manageable, geographically isolated… The recent terrorist attacks in Madrid and London have highlighted the risk of terrorist attacks against European infrastructure. The EU’s response must be swift, coordinated, and efficient.1

Logistics of War

“I saw immediately that something terrible had happened here. He was purple in the face, his pulse hardly countable. I had a desperate man in front of me.”1

Networked Food Economy

Sunday, July 7, 1907. In response to an escalating labor conflict, Dutch army and naval forces entered the Rotterdam harbor in the estuaries of the Rhine and Meuse Rivers. At stake was the pneumatic pumping of bulk grain from sea vessels to river barges. Compared to the traditional manual unloading of grain sacks, the new harbor infrastructure promised to save 94 percent of the labor previously needed and boost Rotterdam’s grain trade. The German milling trade association (Verein deutscher Handelsmuller), for which Rotterdam was a major transit node, and the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce promoted the new infrastructure. A few grain companies started to use it, but most preferred the old system— until the labor conflict got out of hand. Port workers called the new machines “bread robbers”: They sucked the lifeblood out of workers as they sucked grain out of ships. A first strike in 1905 seemed successful. When a few grain companies again started to use pneumatic unloaders in 1907, another boycott followed. Now violence escalated. Workers attacked the grain ship SS Hillhouse to assault strike breakers brought in by the companies. Port worker Hein Mol remembered how “in blind anger the workers hit on the strike breakers, there was no pardon. Some of them jumped overboard in mortal fear … many paid with broken limbs. The ones that did not jump were simply thrown over. The screaming was terrible. One policeman was knifed, others surrendered their sabers and begged for mercy.”1 The Mayor declared a state of siege and sent for the nation’s navy and cavalry. Grain trade companies closed ranks and rapidly introduced grain elevators to break the revolt. Further worker resistance proved futile. By 1913 virtually all grain that entered Rotterdam was unloaded pneumatically.

Manipulating Space & Time

In central St. Petersburg, on the northern bank of the Neva, there is a railroad station. It is a fairly small one, with only a few tracks, but it has a particular place in Russian history: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrived here in spring 1917 to initiate the Great Socialist October Revolution. The Finland station can be regarded as the physical place of a new era’s arrival in Russia. To the Finland Station was the title of American historian Edmund Wilson’s classic study of the evolution of socialist and revolutionary thinking in Europe, indicating that it was a long and troublesome journey, metaphorically speaking, that eventually led Lenin to get off the train here.1

Transforming the Narrative of the History of Chinese Technology: East and West in Bertrand Gille’s Histoire des Techniques

In his magisterial The History of Techniques, the French historian of technology Bertrand Gille (1920–1980) constructs a Western-centric world history of technology based on a technical systems app ...