Netherlands Royal Shell

Royal Dutch-Shell appears as a powerful international oil competitor whose pursuit of petroleum markets places corporate rivalry alongside war and postwar diplomacy. The novel gives the company no direct scene or speaking voice; instead, its significance emerges through news material and conversations that frame oil as a source of strategic power and international competition.

Rivalry with Standard Oil

A news passage describes the contest between Royal Dutch and Standard Oil as a struggle for control of world markets, marked by envy, discontent, and suspicion. In that account, the conflict had been halted by the war. The company is thus introduced not through its internal structure or a particular executive, but through the scale of its rivalry: the market itself becomes a field of international struggle.

Oil and the Near East

At a Paris gathering, an engineer working for Standard Oil argues that Anglo-Persian and Royal Dutch are getting ahead of the United States in the Near East. He links that commercial disadvantage to political decisions over mandates and to the prospect of control over places such as Baku and Mosul. His account is an interested participant’s argument, not a neutral report; nevertheless, it shows how the novel connects petroleum companies to the diplomatic contest over territory and influence.

An Expanding Demand

Later, Edgar Robbins describes Standard Oil and Royal Dutch-Shell as companies that can never have enough crude oil. He uses the comparison to challenge the idea that domestic supply would make overseas resources irrelevant: in his view, competition itself drives the search for more. His remarks turn petroleum from a commodity into a measure of corporate appetite and help explain why distant oil regions recur in conversations about international power.

Narrative Significance

Royal Dutch-Shell remains a presence in reported speech rather than a developed institutional portrait. The company’s importance lies in the connections the novel draws around it: rivalry with Standard Oil, competition for Near Eastern oil, and the overlap of commercial interests with diplomatic and wartime concerns. The evidence establishes this framing but does not describe the company’s internal organization, specific operations, or the eventual outcome of its competition with Standard Oil.