French Capital, the Warsaw Power Plant, and the Birth of Economic Nationalism in Interwar Poland.

The article focuses on Poland's struggle for economic sovereignty in the interwar period through the 20-year conflict between Warsaw's authorities and the French-owned Compagnie d'Électricité de Varsovie (CEV), which controlled the city's power plant. It examines how Poland, facing imperial legacies and dependence on foreign capital, challenged French economic influence by contesting CEV's privileges, rejecting international arbitration rulings, and ultimately municipalizing the power plant in 1936 as part of a broader move toward economic nationalism. The dispute illustrates the tensions new Central and Eastern European states faced in balancing foreign investment with independent policy-making amid asymmetrical international relations and the Great Depression. The article also highlights complexities in defining corporate nationality, as CEV was nominally French but had significant German ownership, complicating legal and diplomatic claims.