1950 Royal Dutch Petroleum Company / Shell Map of the World

This is a 1949 Royal Dutch Shell map of the world, offering insight into the global reach of big oil in the mid-20th century.

A Closer Look

Color highlights global regions where Shell operates with gray marking countries and regions where Shell both marketed its goods and conducted other business, including manufacturing, exploration, and/or production. Shell only marketed its products in counties and regions shaded yellow, while it conducted no business at all in countries colored green. In the lone orange area (modern-day Iraq) Royal Dutch Shell conducted 'other activities only', in this case, per the map, exploration and/or production. Symbols dot the map and mark specific exploration, production, and manufacturing sites. Red dots mark bunker stations used for refueling ships and, in this case, likely used to store petroleum offloaded from tankers. Main tanker routes are represented by dashed lines, some of which have small tanker icons.

Publication History and Census

This map was printed by Koninklijke Drukkerijen Lankhout-Immig and published by Royal Dutch Shell c. 1950. There appears to be at least two editions. One was included in the 1949 Royal Dutch Shell Annual Report and the other was published with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company Diamond Jubilee Book in 1950. Only two examples of the separate map are cataloged in OCLC and are part of the collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft in Kiel, Germany. The Royal Dutch Petroleum Company Diamond Jubilee Book is well represented in institutional collections.