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The 1970s were a period marked by price hikes and fluctuations in the commodity markets, both of which had considerable economic and political repercussions. Although this refers to almost all kinds of raw materials, the case of oil dominates the memory. Metals, by contrast, have received little attention despite their crucial importance for both industrialized consumer states and ore-exporting developing countries. This article develops three main points. First, by highlighting the global metal markets from the late 1960s to the early 1980s it contextualizes the oil-price shock and points out the interactions between the markets for energy and other raw materials. Second, the article aims to draw attention to the sense of crisis in Western industrialized countries regarding their metal supply during this period. This is a topic which has been overshadowed by the case of oil, but which nevertheless deserves study, also because of the parallels to recent developments between 2004 and 2011. Third, the article analyses how notions of resource scarcity, vulnerability and crisis were constructed despite the fact that the commodity crisis proved to be a merely anticipated crisis with high and volatile prices, but no long-term disruptions of supply. Within this article West Germany serves as a case study for highly industrialized, import-dependent countries. The focus is on non-ferrous metals like copper, nickel and aluminium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including supply of mineral resources, economic aspects of World War II and oil price crisis of 1970s.

Since the nineteenth century, access to and the development of natural resources became an important element of national and international politics. Resource security emerged as an issue vital to national security; and resource competition and crises gave rise to international tensions as well as to technological innovation and new modes of transnational cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]