"The Saudi royal family and Aramco leadership are, and almost always have been, motivated by ambitions of long-term strength and profit. They use Islamic law, traditional ideology, and harsh justice to maintain stability and their own power, but underneath the thobes and abayas and behind the...

Preface -- "America Should Produce Its Own Rubber" -- Reverse Passage -- Missionaries of Capital -- An American Protectorate? -- Contested Development -- Plantation Lives -- Cold War Concessions -- Epilogue.

This book describes the events and relationships that established Barings Bank as the world's first merchant bank and it's role in transforming the US into an international superpower. Appendixes examine the genealogy of the Baring, Bingham, and Willing families; the impact of banking pioneers...