This paper explores the relationship between oil development and collective violence in the city of Kirkuk, the capital of the Iraqi oil industry, by focussing on three different episodes of unrest: the strikes staged by oil workers in 1927 and 1946 respectively, and the clashes between Kurds and Turkmens in 1959 on the occasion of the first anniversary of Iraqi Revolution. The baseline of the discussion is provided by a critical analysis of the dynamics, setting and actors involved in these violent events in the context of the rapid growth of Kirkuk as an oil city over four momentous decades of Iraqi history. Within this general framework, and considering episodes of violence as an integral part of the development of urban political sociability, three main lines of discussions are pursued. The first concentrates on the symbolic, ceremonial and physical nature of the violent actions advocated and performed by strikers, political and labour activists (in the case of 1959 particularly Communists and Nationalists), demonstrators, police forces and army contingents. These actions are analysed as evidence of the emergence and consolidation of new class, ethnic and political bonds among the residents of Kirkuk and of its expanding oil conurbation - a suburban belt which brought many underprivileged Kurdish oil workers to the forefront of urban unrest. The second line of investigation focuses on the spatial dimension of violence and highlights continuity and changes in the use of different urban spaces such as streets, squares, public buildings and suburban areas by violent actors from the 1920s to the late 1950s. One of the key questions in this connection is the extent to which urban expansion and suburbanisation affected the setting of violent protest. The role played by the apparatus of urban public security in containing, provoking or staging violence in each of the three episodes considered constitute the third focus of discussion. The objective is to understand how police forces, paramilitaries and army units featured as key players in the ‘politics of coercion’ which characterized the development of Kirkuk as an oil polity under the close scrutiny of the IPC (Iraqi Petroleum Company), the British mandatory administration, and after 1932, the Iraqi government.