Calouste Gulbenkian
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Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (Scutari, Turkey, 29 March 1869–Lisbon, 20 July 1955) was an Armenian businessman and philanthropist.
He was born in Scutari, now Üsküdar and part of Istanbul, and educated at King's College London, where he studied petroleum engineering. Immediately on leaving, he went into the oil business, and was one of the first to open up the Middle East to the trade. He was involved in founding Royal Dutch/Shell, and his habit of retaining five per cent of the shares of the oil companies he developed earned him the nickname, "Mr. Five Per Cent". A book about him has that title. He was naturalized a British citizen in 1902.
When Iraq was taken from the Ottoman Empire after World War I, its oil was divided up among the western countries and controlled through the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Gulbenkian owned five percent of IPC; actually. the Pasha had given him the entire Iraqi oil concession, but he gave the rest away to corporations able to develop the whole, growing wealthy on the remainder. He reputedly said, "Better a small piece of a big pie, than a big piece of a small one."
Gulbenkian amassed a huge fortune and an art collection which he kept in a private museum at his Paris home. He was president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) from 1930-1932, resigning as a result of a smear campaign by the Soviet Armenian government. He fled German-occupied France in 1942 and would live until his death in a hotel room in Lisbon. Following his death in 1955, a museum (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian) and a charitable foundation (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian) were established in Lisbon. The Gulbenkian Foundation is chiefly associated with educational, scientific, and artistic projects.
[edit] References
For general background concerning the development of the petroleum industry in the Middle East see
- Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991
- Blair, John M., The Control of Oil, New York: Pantheon, 1976.
For Gulbenkian as a collector see
- Azeredo Perdigão, José, de, Calouste Gulbenkian, Collector, Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, n.d. [c. 1981]
