French utilities committed to globalization (19th-21st centuries)

Résumé 0

Whilst being enrooted in public “common goods”, French utilities, either State-controlled or private, became more and more committed to strategies of developing abroad their portfolio of engineering and managing skills. They followed the past of economic imperialism along geopolitics in emerging countries (Russia, Ottoman Empire, Latin America), then also throughout the colonial empire; such offensives were embodied by the adventure of the Suez Canal. From the 1980s, the reconstruction of the worldwide connections opened doors to geoeconomics, that is the will to resist competition and to conquer market shares abroad thanks to the valuation of capital of competence and trust. Every public, privatised or already quoted companies took part to the run for concessions and the deliveries of engineering and managing services (waste, water, postal, railway, bus, energy utilities). This contributed to the competitiveness of French economy and economic patriotism.