“In fact all three Shell members of the editorial committee, Watts, Van der Veer and Munsiff, had form in the culture of corporate cover-up and were therefore ideal from the standpoint of Shell to have editorial influence over inclusion (or non-inclusion) of the dark side of Shell’s history and how that information was treated (spun?)“
By John Donovan
The official history of Royal Dutch Shell published in three volumes in 2007 was commissioned by the company and authored by historians associated with Utrecht University who were given unrestricted access to Royal Dutch Shell archives.
The relevant historians, who describe themselves as the researchers and authors of the work, say that none of them are Shell employees and claim that the work is “the fruit of our independent research” with their progress “monitored by an editorial committee, with an equal number of economic historians and company representatives.”