ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses one of the most profound gaps in the historiography of nationalism and national indifference: the role of industrial concerns prior to the Second World War. Doleshal argues that the national indifference of the mostly rural Moravians who came to work in the Bat'a factory complex in Zlín provided fertile ground for the company’s supranational philosophy. Doleshal’s analysis highlights how national indifference was crucial to the creation of a business culture from the early 1900s onwards. He demonstrates how the Bat'a supranational ideal resisted the nationalist rhetoric that coursed through interwar Czechoslovakia in complex and often surprising ways.
