THE LOST EMPIRE OF EMANUEL NOBEL

Before Alfred Nobel created his prize, his father was siring the richest family in Czarist Russia.

Brunt, author of The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel (2023), opens with Immanuel Nobel (1801-1872), a self-taught engineer and entrepreneur in the model of Thomas Edison who made and lost fortunes in his native Sweden before fleeing creditors to St. Petersburg in 1837. His persistence was rewarded when he invented an effective undersea mine. In 1873, son Ludvig, now managing the business, sent brother Robert to southern Russia, where he noticed oil and gas bubbling to the surface and attracting little attention from the locals. His success in convincing Ludvig to invest proved a bonanza. Oil fields around Baku in Azerbaijan became even more productive than those in Pennsylvania 20 years earlier. When Ludvig died in 1888, son Emanuel (1859-1932) expanded the business and soon competed with John D. Rockefeller to dominate the world’s oil market. At this point, Brunt introduces a familiar character, an occasional employee of the Nobels who later called himself Stalin. A nasty figure, he devoted himself to agitation among oil workers and leading criminal gangs that extorted money and robbed banks to support revolutionaries. Emanuel Nobel soldiered on; the author portrays him as an attractive figure, honest in a corrupt business and a considerate employer in an industry where working conditions were terrible. Nobel understood that the 1917 revolution boded ill. Brunt reminds readers that many Westerners believed that Bolshevism would collapse and that Russia’s wealth and nationalized industries would be up for grabs. Reputable entrepreneurs were happy to loan money to its government; in 1920 Nobel sold half the interest in his company, already nationalized, to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil before escaping to Sweden and a prosperous retirement.

Well-deserved attention to a little-known slice of history.