Studies of energy and geopolitics have been almost totally monopolized by analyses of the largest and most powerful countries in the world. This article argues that it is crucial to include the world's smaller and less powerful nations, too, into the analysis. Adopting a systems perspective, the article discusses Europe's smaller nations that have come to depend on other countries for various activities relating to their fuel supplies, and how they have sought to cope with these dependencies over time. It discusses, in particular, two overarching strategies in this context: first, investments in domestic energy sources, and secondly, efforts to cope with – rather than to reduce – energy imports. Smaller nations have often been more dependent and more vulnerable than the larger countries in the geopolitical energy arena. However, there are numerous exceptions to this pattern, especially in terms of the critical hub positions that a range of smaller nations have managed to secure in the international energy trade. Furthermore, Europe's smaller countries have had a more narrow range of methods at their disposal than the larger countries when it comes to coping with energy dependence – but perhaps not as narrow as commonly believed.

In 1900 a Swedish member of parliament argued that Sweden had a Damocles Sword hanging over it due to the country's rapidly growing imports of coal. This energy import dependence has continued to plague Sweden ever since. While coal dominated imports in the first half of the twentieth century, oil and uranium dominated in the second half. This article examines how Swedish public and private actors coped with the country's energy dependence. Several crises prompted such efforts. Coal strikes in the Interwar years and oil embargoes in the 1970s spurred diversification and collaboration with other importing countries. During World War II Sweden built trustful coal relations with Nazi Germany and stockpiled coal. In the post-war era fear of the international oil majors spurred attempts to increase public control over energy imports, and a state-owned company for foreign oil exploration was set up. Moreover, during and after wars and other acute crises Swedish actors intensified their efforts to exploit more of the country's domestic energy resources. However, when the crisis was over it often proved to be cheaper to import energy from abroad. Thus imports have remained high and the Damocles Sword is still hanging over Sweden.

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.

Europe's infrastructure both united and divided peoples and places via economic systems, crises, and wars. Some used transport, communication, and energy infrastructure to supply food, power, industrial products, credit, and unprecedented wealth; others mobilized infrastructure capacities for waging war on scales hitherto unknown. Europe's natural world was fundamentally transformed; its landscapes, waterscapes, and airscapes turned into infrastructure themselves. Europe's Infrastructure Transition reframes the conflicted story of modern European history by taking material networks as its point of departure. It traces the priorities set and the choices made in constructing transnational infrastructure connections - within and beyond the continent. Moreover, this study introduces an alternative set of historically-key individuals, organizations, and companies in the making of modern Europe and analyzes roads both taken and ignored.

China's international activities in the oil industry have figured prominently in the public debate in recent years. Whereas the focus today is on China's oil imports and oil-related investments abroad, this article takes a step back to analyze a period in time during which China's most important international role was that of an oil exporter. In the course of a few years in the 1970s, China's domestic oil production grew much more rapidly than domestic demand, leading some analysts in the West to envision China as a major world oil power in the making - a "Saudi Arabia of the Far East." The article traces the evolution of this debate, focusing not only on the twists and turns that made the vision possible in the first place, but also on the machinations that ultimately made actors and analysts conclude that China's future would not be in exports, after all, but in massive imports of oil.