The Portuguese New State Estado Novo, a dictatorship regime based on a corporatist ideology, built up an ambitious maritime policy. Making the nation go back to the sea served to promote economic self-sufficiency and to recover the past golden age of oceanic navigation. Both fed positively into the regimes propaganda arguments. Rebuilding a Blue Nation offers an overview on the remarkable features of these modern age maritime policies sardine and cod fisheries, merchant fleets and colonial routes, shipping and ports. Describing the form of the national maritime economy, and how the New State ideology drove its programmes until the 1970s, reveals