French Strategies of Directed Internationalized Statism

France has a popular and academic reputation as a state-influenced economy that is suspicious of foreign private investors, especially in strategic sectors and ‘national firms’. Yet this chapter shows that it has followed a strategy of directed internationalized statism, focused on attracting selected Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) to specific ‘national champion’ firms and sectors. The political executive has welcomed SWFs, despite some parliamentary concerns over national security and a rhetoric of ‘economic patriotism’ that arose when private American firms sought to take over French ones. Although additional legislative powers for overseas investments have been created, they have not been used against SWFs. Instead, policy makers have used SWF investments to support domestic firms, notably by providing new sources of patient capital, supportive share owners, and export orders. The French case shows how policy makers can use overseas state investors as part of strategies to adapt longstanding policies of state-led industrial policies to liberalized and internationalized markets.

SWADESHI CAPITALISM IN COLONIAL BOMBAY

This article examines economic nationalism in India, specifically the role of capitalists in late colonial Bombay. It shows how swadeshi was the fulcrum that supported the expressions of nationalism and capitalism. The notion that Indian capital needed to be used for the benefit of Indian nationals became established as nationalist thought by the 1930s. Such swadeshi capitalism – Indian capital for Indian industries – recasts the notion of swadeshi as a broader, more sophisticated cultural response to colonialism and globalization. As capitalism transitioned from mercantile activities to capital-hungry industrialization, nationalism was itself reframed from being anti-colonial in 1905 to being anti-globalization by the 1950s. Swadeshi capitalism helped to overlay a radical, grittier form of economic nationalism over the intellectually driven version of the nineteenth century. Swadeshi, as a form of economic patriotism, can be distinguished from similar expressions of nationalism within the British empire and dominions. This article is an effort to decolonize the narratives of modern capitalism by shifting the focus away from the global West. It will appeal to readers interested in South Asian history, and those interested in cultural responses to globalization, the contested nature of economic nationalism, and histories of capitalism in the global South.