The name of Nobel usually calls to mind Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, and the internationally prestigious prizes that bear his name. But Alfred was only one member of a creative and innovative family who built an industrial empire in prerevolutionary Russia. The saga begins with an emigre from Sweden, Immanuel Nobel, who was an architect, a pioneer producer of steam engines, and a maker of weapons.

Immanuel's sons included Alfred; Robert, who directed the family's activities in the Caspian oil fields; and Ludwig, an engineering genius and manufacturing magnate whose boundless energy and fierce determination created the Russian petroleum industry.

Ludwig's son Emanuel showed similar mettle, shrewdly bargaining with the Rothschilds for control of the Russian markets and competing head-on with Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell for lucrative world markets.

Perhaps no family in history has played so decisive a role in building an industrial empire in an underdeveloped but resource-rich nation. Yet the achievements of the Nobel family have been largely forgotten. When the Bolsheviks came to power, Emmanuel had to flee the country disguised as a peasant.

The Nobel empire with its 50,000 workers lay in ruins. An empire which had taken eighty years to design and build, was nearly destroyed, bringing a sudden and bitter end to one of the most remarkable industrial odysseys in world history.

This episode is what I learned from reading The Russian Rockefellers: The Saga of the Nobel Family and the Russian Oil Industry by Robert Tolf.

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