Nationalization, alteration or assumption of control or ownership of private property by the state. It is historically a more recent development than, and differs in motive and degree from, expropriation, or eminent domain, which is the right of government to take property, sometimes without compensation, for particular public purposes (such as the construction of roads, reservoirs, or hospitals).

• Nationalization, therefore, may occur through the transfer of a company’s assets to the state or through the transfer of share capital, leaving the company in existence to carry on its business under state control.
• Nationalization has accompanied the implementation of communist or socialist theories of government, as was the case in the transfer of industrial, banking, and insurance enterprises to the state in Russia after 1918, the nationalization of the oil industries in Mexico in 1938 and in Iran in 1951, and the nationalization of foreign businesses in Cuba in 1960.