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Henryk Szlajfer offers, against the background of developments in Latin America (mainly Brazil) and Central Europe (mainly Poland) in times of first globalization from late 19th century until late 1930s, a reinterpretation of economic nationalism both as an analytical category and historical experience. Critically explored are attempts at proto-economic nationalism in early 19th century Poland and Latin America.
List of contents
Note on terminology
Introduction
PART ONE: RETHINKING ECONOMIC NATIONALISM
1. Setting the agenda
2. Precursors
Mercantilist antecedents: 'The improvement of our Lands'
Friedrich List and his System: 'an English State secret'
John Maynard Keynes: 'if we happen to want it'
3. Categories
National economy: elusive concept?
Holistic and particularistic nationalisms
Digression: the state
4. Against 'wishes and dreams': foreign capital and economic nationalism
Foreign capital as an enemy?
Commodities, capital, migrations
Protectionism and foreign capital
5. Beyond liberalism: transformations of political nationalism
Toward integral nationalism
Anti-liberal temptation: autocracy and integral nationalism
Latin American liberal-conservative consensus
Populist response
PART TWO: ECONOMIC NATIONALISM AT WORK
6. A proto-nationalist interlude
The Kingdom of Poland and Latin America:
similarities and dissimilarities
After discontinuité structurelle
Variants of industrialization
Selected problems
Failure and some long-term consequences
7. Issues in primary-sector nationalism: Latin America
The heritage: a note
An internationalist protectionist state
Varieties of the export sector and economic nationalism
The regional dimension
Transformational potential of primary-sector nationalism
8. Pieces of a puzzle: toward holistic nationalism
The restrained nationalism of industrialists
Holistic nationalism as an enforced process
Against foreign domination: yes, but
'Those who don't obey the rules win': beyond orthodoxy
'Economic independence' as state business: étatisme
Conclusions
References
Index
About the author
Henryk Szlajfer is Professor Emeritus at the Polish Academy of Sciences and Warsaw University. His publications include
Economic Nationalism and Globalization: Lessons from Latin America and Central Europe (Brill, 2012) and
Jews and New Christians in the Making of the Atlantic World in the 16th–17th Centuries (Brill, 2023). He co-edited
Western Europe, Eastern Europe and World Development 13th–18th Centuries: Collection of Essays of Marian Mäowist (Brill, 2010).
Summary
Szlajfer interprets economic nationalism as a significant world-wide phenomenon intimately linked with the birth, development and crisis of capitalist modernity
