The end of World War II marked a turning point for global empires; weakened by years of conflict, European nations could no longer hold onto their colonies. A wave of independence followed. This shift was fueled by local anti-colonial activists, the heavy economic toll of the war, and the strategic interests of the new global superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet these transformations also raised an important question: How would these developing nations approach economic independence?
In his latest book, "Constructing Economic Nationalisms in Brazil and India" (Cambridge University Press, 2026), MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) Associate Professor Jason Jackson tracks how two of these emerging nations developed different brands of economic nationalism from the late 1800s through the early post-World War II era.
The timing of the book is prescient. The rise of globalization in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s led many observers to declare nationalism a relic of the past. Yet economic nationalism has returned with a vengeance over the past few years, making clear the importance of understanding this phenomenon in its historical and contemporary forms.
Although the idea of economic nationalism is commonly used, it is often misleadingly defined as "anti-foreign," says Jackson. Instead, Jackson's research provides a more nuanced definition of how Brazil and India regulated foreign investment after World War II to advance their standing in the industrialized world.
"Brazil and India typically come to mind if one were to ask which countries in Latin America or Asia pursued a lot of nationalist policies, but their approaches to economic nationalism manifested in very different ways," says Jackson.
The two countries offer compelling comparisons of how economic policies and development strategies can diverge. Especially during the postwar era, both countries were driven to boost national income and secure economic sovereignty, and both aggressively pursued rapid industrialization. In addition to these shared goals, both countries faced the same basic hurdles: limited access to finance and technology that were deemed essential to building a modern industrial nation.
Jackson argues that it was Brazil's and India's colonial past and early independence experiences that formed their diverse approaches to economic growth. He selected two industries - oil and automobiles - to contrast their foreign direct investment policies. By focusing on the colonial experience, he explains how economic policies were born from a mix of cultural identity and material reality.
Jackson's research relies on primary archival materials, including diplomatic correspondence between American officials in both countries and the U.S. Department of State. Because these officials served as boots-on-the-ground observers and intermediaries, their reports offer unique insights into the motivations of local business and government elites and the strategic concerns of American multinational firms.
"Nationalism manifested in very different ways in both places," says Jackson. "In Brazil, I found that what was really salient and drove the parameters of economic nationalism was tied to the idea of protecting their natural resources. There was a strong belief that Brazil was very resource-rich and that outsiders - from neighboring countries to global powers - wanted its resources."
This view was exemplified by oil. The link between anti-colonialism and oil in Brazil dates to the 19th century, beginning with the struggle between landed elites and the imperial court over subsoil property rights. By 1923, this sentiment was so strong that a law was proposed to ban oil concessions to foreigners. Notably, this law occurred before any oil had even been discovered.
By contrast, Brazilians were much less concerned about foreign ownership and control of other areas of industrial production such as manufacturing. To establish their automobile industry, they actively encouraged foreign firms to enter Brazil and to be the dominant partner in joint ventures, with local companies with Brazilian firms playing a more supportive, and often explicitly subordinate, role.
In India, the policies for the development of the petroleum sector and automobile manufacturing were completely reversed.
Long before the British had arrived in India or the Industrial Revolution began, India was a global leader in textiles. Their rich artisanal history is defined by centuries-old expertise in weaving and dyeing - skills that made Indian fabrics highly sought-after for generations.
Jackson argues that Indian economic nationalists strongly believed that British "free trade" economic policies toward the Indian colony decimated this age-old industry. "Free trade," says Jackson, "derailed India from its natural path towards industrialization from the perspective of Indian nationalists. They saw the British as having enforced a trading system that brought in cheap manufactured goods from industrial sites such as Lancashire and Manchester in North West England and undermined artisanal production in India. In fact, many nationalists thought India would have 'naturally' had its own industrial revolution had the British never arrived."
After winning independence, Indian nationalist elites were determined to address this colonial-era policy structure that had favored British capital. With a "manufacturing" mindset to grow its economic base, foreign automobile firms were restricted from having majority ownership or managerial control of companies in the emerging automobile industry in India. In fact, General Motors, which had been operating in India since the 1920s, was forced out of India in the post-war years, both for their failure to do "real" manufacturing (GM simply imported "complete knock-down kits" that were easily assembled with hand tools, rather than doing "real" manufacturing in the country) and because the government was intent on allowing domestic firms to flourish.
With oil production, however, Indians did not harbor concerns of foreign control or foreign multinationals taking the lead in extracting India's petroleum. Despite explicitly recognizing oil multinationals as potential instruments of neo-imperial control, they allowed British and American oil companies to establish dominant positions.
For Jackson, the biggest takeaway from comparing these two countries and the directions they took to achieve economic independence is that to understand contemporary geopolitics, it's "crucially important" to understand nationalism.
"Up until recently, many scholars thought that economic nationalism was a thing of the past. Yet we now live in a world where it's fairly undeniable that nationalism is a force," says Jackson. "In this context, there's a tension between those that want to retain the kind of liberal, global international order of a few years ago, while there are others pushing for a global economy that is more nationally centered and regionally organized. We see this kind of battle playing out in a variety of ways between the European Union, Russia, China, and the United States.
"If you want to understand today's complex and ever-shifting geopolitical environment, particularly from the perspective of people in other parts of the world, it's useful to be able to understand how they interpret the actions of the current global powers. One of the things we can take directly from this book is that we can understand how different kinds of nationalisms shape the ways in which people make sense of not just historical developments or things that have happened in the past, but contemporary geopolitical developments. Together, these help us to assess the present and to imagine possible futures."
