Common Destines: French Trading Ports and Oil in the Twentieth Century, 1914–1965

France did not discover oil in the twentieth century. In 1914, French seaports imported it, ever since the discovery of the first oil fields in the United States in the late 1860s. The first customs legislation was also established before World War I to set oil importation regulations. Sometime after the first arrivals of petroleum, the law of 1873—and moreover the law of July 1893—encouraged the import of crude oil. This legislation tended to promote a new refining sector so that this primary resource became useable. However, these measures were nipped in the bud with the law of 1903, which increased the tariff on the import of crude oil. The effect of this turnaround was to promote from then on the import of refined oil, which was controlled by 10 companies, the so-called Cartel of Ten (Beltran, 2018). If oil was a marginal resource in the French energy equation before 1914, it became increasingly important during the twentieth century: if it accounted for only 11% of the energy balance relative to 80% for coal in 1938, its share increased to 30% against 54% for coal in 1960. It attained an historical peak in 1973 of almost 70%, whereas coal only accounted for 16 of the energy imports. In summary, the respective shares of oil and coal inverted within 35 years (Eck, 2009). In other words, oil appeared as the “new coal” of the twentieth century and became a strategic resource both in economic and military terms.