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Bata, a Czech firm, settled in France in 1926 and experienced from then on a steady growth. The production, labor and selling methods that contributed to its success were adopted later on by other major French groups. Above all, they were criticized by many of their opponents, including small and medium-sized enterprises, which denounced its disloyal methods. These attacks continued for twenty years and culminated during the German Occupation and the policy of anti-Semitic despoilment. The firm’s history and its installation in France and subsequent growth is at the crossroads of an economic history, that of the changes in the shoe industry in the middle of the 20th century, and also of a social history, that of the increase in exclusiveness as an economic precept before being established a political principle.