CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY.

NYAYA NAGAR, MITHAPUR, PATNA-800001.

Project Topic:
EMERGENCE OF THIRD WORLD

FINAL DRAFT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE

COURSE TITLED-
POLITICAL SCIENCE – II {INTERNATIONAL RELATION}

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

Prof. Dr. S.P SINGH SHUBHAM
FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE ROLL NO: 1764
B.A LL.B{2017-22}

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 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the project entitled “EMERGENCE OF THIRD WORLD” submitted
by me at CHANAKYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY is a record of bona fide project
work carried out by me under the guidance of our mentor Prof. Dr. S.P SINGH. I further
declare that the work reported in this project has not been submitted and will not be submitted,
either in part or in full, for the award of any other degree or diploma in this university or in any
other university.

----------------------
(SHUBHAM)
BA LL.B {Hons.}
ROLL NUMBER: 1764

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It is a fact that any research work prepared, compiled or formulated in isolation is inexplicable
to an extent. This research work, although prepared by me, is a culmination of efforts of a lot
of people who remained in veil, who gave their intense support and helped me in the completion
of this project.
Firstly, I am very grateful to my subject teacher Prof. Dr. S.P SINGH, without the kind support
and help of whom the completion of this project was a herculean task for me. He donated his
valuable time from his busy schedule to help me to complete this project. I would like to thank
her for his valuable suggestions towards the making of this project.
I am highly indebted to my parents and friends for their kind co-operation and encouragement
which helped me in completion of this project. I am also thankful to the library staff of my
college which assisted me in acquiring the sources necessary for the compilation of my project.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank the Almighty who kept me mentally strong and in
good health to concentrate on my project and to complete it in time.
I thank all of them!!!

SHUBHAM

ROLL NUMBER: 1764

B.A LL.B{Hons.}

SESSION: 2017-2022.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION-------------------------------------------------------Pg. 05-07
 AIMS & OBJECTIVES
 HYPOTHESIS
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
 SOURCES OF DATA
 LIMITATIONS
II. CHAPTERS:
 WHAT IS THIRD WORLD--------------------------------Pg. 08-10
 HISTORY OF THIRD WORLD---------------------------Pg. 10
 CHARACTERISTICS OF THIRD WORLD------------Pg. 11
 ROLE IN WORLD POLITICS-----------------------------Pg. 12
 ECONOMIC PROSPECTS----------------------------------Pg. 13
 WHAT MAKES A NATION III WORLD----------------Pg. 14
 THIRD WORLDISM------------------------------------------Pg. 15
 THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT AID-----------------Pg. 16
 THIRD WORLD GREAT DIVERGENCE & GREAT
CONVERGENCE----------------------------------------------Pg. 17

III. CONCLUSION----------------------------------------------------------Pg. 18
IV. BIBLIOGRAPHY-------------------------------------------------------Pg. 19

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 INTRODUCTION

Worlds within the World?

The First, the Second, and the Third World.

When people talk about the poorest countries of the world, they often refer to them with the
general term Third World, and they think everybody knows what they are talking about. But
when you ask them if there is a Third World, what about a Second or a First World, you
almost always get an evasive answer. Other people even try to use the terms as a ranking
scheme for the state of development of countries, with the First World on top, followed by
the Second World and so on, that's perfect - nonsense.

To close the gap of information you will find here explanations of the terms.

The use of the terms First, the Second, and the Third World is a rough, and it's safe to say,
outdated model of the geopolitical world from the time of the cold war.
There is no official definition of the first, second, and the third world. Below OWNO's
explanation of the terms.

The origin of the terminology is unclear. In 1952 Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, wrote
an article in the French magazine L'Observateur which ended by comparing the Third World
with the Third Estate: "ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers État" (this
ignored Third World, exploited, scorned like the Third Estate). Other sources claim that
Charles de Gaulle coined the term Third World, maybe de Gaulle only has quoted Sauvy.
The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-
aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Canada, Japan, South
Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while
the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the Second World. This
terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups
based on political and economic divisions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of
the Cold War, the term Third World has been used less and less. It is being replaced with
terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or the Global South. The
concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic
state of the world.
The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin
America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in
the Non-Aligned Movement. In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter
Rodney, Theotoni dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been

5
connected to the world-systemic economic division as "periphery" countries dominated by the
countries comprising the economic "core".
Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon
definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often

regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were economically poor, and
non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet

the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil,
India and China now more commonly referred to as part of BRIC. Historically, some European
countries were non-aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous,
including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.
French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the
French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World (French: Tiers
Monde), referring to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the
Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War.His usage was a reference to the Third Estate, the
commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed the clergy and
nobles, who composed the First Estate and Second Estate, respectively. Sauvy wrote, "This third
world ignored, exploited, despised like the third estate also wants to be something." He conveyed
the concept of political non-alignment with either the capitalist or communist bloc.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES

1. The research tends to discuss the meaning of Third World.

2. The researcher tends to discuss the emergence of Third World.
3. The researcher tends to analyse the History of Third World.

HYPOTHESIS

The underdevelopment of the third world is marked by a number of common traits; distorted
and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed
world and to provide markets for their finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high
population growth; and widespread poverty. Nevertheless, the third world is sharply
differentiated, for it includes countries on various levels of economic development. And
despite the poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most
third world countries are wealthy.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The researcher has relied upon doctrinal method of research to complete the project.

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 SOURCES OF DATA

The researcher has relied upon both primary as well as secondary sources to complete the
project.

(1) Primary Sources: Books.


(2) Secondary Sources: Material available on the internet.

LIMITATION

Taking into consideration the project topic allotted, the researcher cannot opt for non-
doctrinal method of research and hence has relied only upon doctrinal method of study where
library references is utmost requisite and shall include primary as well as secondary
resources.

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 CHAPTER- I
WHAT IS THIRD WORLD?

The term Third World was originally coined in times of the Cold War to distinguish those
nations that are neither aligned with the West (NATO) nor with the East, the Communist
bloc. Today the term is often used to describe the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin
America and Oceania.
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-
aligned with either NATO, or the Communist Bloc. The United States, Western European
nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and
their allies represented the Second World. This terminology provided a way of broadly
categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on social, political, cultural and
economic divisions. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with
colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as
synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement. In the so-called dependency
theory of thinkers like Raul Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre
Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world economic division as
“periphery” countries in the world system that is dominated by the “core” countries.
Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, generally characterized as poor, having economies distorted by their
dependence on the export of primary products to the developed countries in return for
finished products. These nations also tend to have high rates of illiteracy, disease, and
population growth and unstable governments. The term Third World was originally intended
to distinguish the nonaligned nations that gained independence from colonial rule beginning
after World War II from the Western nations and from those that formed the former Eastern
bloc, and sometimes more specifically from the United States and from the former Soviet
Union (the first and second worlds, respectively). For the most part the term has not included
China. Politically, the Third World emerged at the Bandung Conference (1955), which
resulted in the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement. Numerically, the Third World
dominates the United Nations, but the group is diverse culturally and increasingly
economically, and its unity is only hypothetical. The oil-rich nations, such as Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, and Libya, and the newly emerged industrial states, such as Taiwan, South Korea,
and Singapore, have little in common with desperately poor nations, such as Haiti, Chad, and
Afghanistan.
THE THIRD WORLD

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Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed
upon definition of the Third World.[1] Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba,
were often regarded as “Third World”. Because many Third World countries were extremely
poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as “third world
countries”, yet the “Third World” term is also often taken to include newly industrialized
countries like Brazil or China. Historically, some European countries were part of the non-
aligned movement and a few were and are very prosperous, including Austria, Ireland and
Switzerland.
Over the last few decades since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the

term Third World has been used interchangeably with the least developed countries, Global
South and developing countries to describe poorer countries that have struggled to attain
steady economic development, a term that often includes “Second World” countries like
Laos. This usage, however, has become less preferred in recent years. Recently the term
Majority World has come into use, since most people of the world live in poorer and less
developed countries.
Most Third World countries were former colonies. Having gained independence many of
these countries, especially smaller ones, were faced with the challenges of nation and
institution-building on their own for the first time. Due to this common background, many of
these nations were “developing” in economic terms for most of the 20th century, and many
still are. This term, used today, generally denotes countries that have not developed to the
same levels as OECD countries, and are thus in the process of developing.
In the 1980s, economist Peter Bauer offered a competing definition for the term “Third
World”. He claimed that the attachment of Third World status to a particular country was not
based on any stable economic or political criteria, and was a mostly arbitrary process. The
large diversity of countries considered part of the Third World—from Indonesia to
Afghanistan—ranged widely from economically primitive to economically advanced and
from politically non-aligned to Soviet or Western leaning. An argument could also be made
for how parts of the U.S. are more like the Third World. The only characteristic that Bauer
found common in all Third World countries was that their governments “demand and receive
Western aid,” the giving of which he strongly opposed. Thus, the aggregate term “Third
World” was challenged as misleading even during the Cold War period because it had no
consistent or collective identity among the countries it supposedly encompassed.Third World
is a term originally used to distinguish those nations that neither aligned with the West nor
with the East during the Cold War. These countries are also known as the Global South,
developing countries, and least developed countries in academic circles. Development
workers also call them the two-thirds world and The South. Some dislike the term developing
countries as it implies that industrialisation is the only way forward, while they believe it is
not necessarily the most beneficial.
Many “third world” countries are located in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. They are often
nations that were colonized by another nation in the past. The populations of third world
countries are generally very poor but with high birth rates. In general they are not as
industrialized or technologically advanced as the first world. The majority of the countries in
the world fit this classification. The term “third world” was coined by economist Alfred
Sauvy in an article in the French magazine L’Observateur of August 14, 1952. It was a
deliberate reference to the “Third Estate” of the French Revolution. Tiers monde means third
world in French. The term gained widespread popularity during the Cold War when many
poorer nations adopted the category to describe themselves as neither being aligned with
NATO or the USSR, but instead composing a non-aligned “third world” (in this context, the
term “First World” was generally understood to mean the United States and its allies in the

9
Cold War, which would have made the East bloc the “Second World” by default; however,
the latter term was seldom actually used). Leading members of this original “third world”
movement were Yugoslavia, India, and Egypt. Many third world countries believed they
could successfully court both the communist and capitalist nations of the world, and develop
key economic partnerships without necessarily falling under their direct influence. In
practice, this plan did not work out quite so well; many third world nations were exploited or
undermined by the two superpowers who feared these supposedly neutral nations were in
danger of falling into alignment with the enemy. After World War II, the First and Second
Worlds struggled to expand their respective spheres of influence to the Third World. The
militaries and intelligence services of the United States and the Soviet Union worked both
secretly and overtly to influence Third World governments, with mixed success.

CHAPTER: II

HISTORY OF THIRD WORLD

The exact origin of the terminology “third world” is unclear. In 1952, a French demographer
named Alfred Sauvy wrote an article in a French magazine, L’Observateur, that ended by
comparing the Third World with the Third Estate of pre-revolutionary France. Sauvy may
have been the first to use the phrase, remarking “this ignored Third World, exploited, scorned
like the Third Estate.”

The modern descriptor has moved away from its original definition. Today, various
indicators, which are have nothing to do with Cold War alliances, are used to classify “Third
World” countries. These include political rights and civil liberties, Gross National Income
(GNI), Human Development (HDI), as well as the freedom of information within a country.
The concept of the “third world” has evolved to describe countries that suffer from high
infant mortality, low economic development, high levels of poverty and little to no ability to
utilize natural resources.

“Third World” nations tend to have economies dependent on the economic prosperity of the
developed countries and, as a result, tend to have a large foreign debt. A common factor is
the lack of a middle class — “third world” income distribution is made up of impoverished
millions and a very small elite upper class controlling the country’s wealth and resources.
Because their economies are lacking, these countries generally cannot support their high
levels of population growth. The nations of the “Third World” often have unstable
governments and are pervaded by illiteracy and disease.
Although useful as a descriptor for a select group of countries, many exceptions make the
geopolitical term seem hugely outdated. For example, Saudi Arabia, as previously noted, is
technically a “Third World” country, but it obviously does not meet the qualifications
mentioned above. The three worlds additionally do not take into account the emerging
economies of countries like Brazil and India. The phrase has expanded to describe sections of

10
affluent countries that are impoverished compared to richer areas but maybe not so destitute
with regard to levels of global poverty.

The world of the 21st century is much more complex than it was during the Cold War period;
First World countries have third world qualities and vice versa. Calling countries developing
nations versus non-developing nations might be a better option, but it is unclear what the
exact distinction here is either. Very real modern global problems are not well-served by
wishy-washy generalizations.

CHAPTER- III
CHARACTERISTICS OF THIRD WORLD
The underdevelopment of the third world is marked by a number of common traits; distorted
and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed
world and to provide markets for their finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high
population growth; and widespread poverty. Nevertheless, the third world is sharply
differentiated, for it includes countries on various levels of economic development. And
despite the poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most
third world countries are wealthy.This combination of conditions in Asia, Africa, Oceania
and Latin America is linked to the absorption of the third world into the international
capitalist economy, by way of conquest or indirect domination. The main economic
consequence of Western domination was the creation, for the first time in history, of a world
market. By setting up throughout the third world sub-economies linked to the West, and by
introducing other modern institutions, industrial capitalism disrupted traditional economies
and, indeed, societies. This disruption led to underdevelopment.

11
Because the economies of underdeveloped countries have been geared to the needs of
industrialized countries, they often comprise only a few modern economic activities, such as
mining or the cultivation of plantation crops. Control over these activities has often remained
in the hands of large foreign firms. The prices of third world products are usually determined
by large buyers in the economically dominant countries of the West, and trade with the West
provides almost all the third world's income. Throughout the colonial period, outright
exploitation severely limited the accumulation of capital within the foreign-dominated
countries. Even after decolonization (in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, the economies of the
third world developed slowly, or not at all, owing largely to the deterioration of the "terms of
trade"-the relation between the cost of the goods a nation must import from abroad and its
income from the exports it sends to foreign countries. Terms of trade are said to deteriorate
when the cost of imports rises faster than income from exports. Since buyers in the
industrialized countries determined the prices of most products involved in international
trade, the worsening position of the third world was scarcely surprising. Only the oil-
producing countries (after 1973) succeeded in escaping the effects of Western, domination of
the world economy.
No study of the third world could hope to assess its future prospects without taking into
account population growth. In 1980, the earth's population was estimated at 4.4 billion, 72
percent of it in the third world, and it seemed likely to reach 6.2 billion, 80 percent of it in the
third world, at the close of the century. This population explosion in the third world will
surely prevent any substantial improvements in living standards there as well as threaten
people in stagnant economies with worsening poverty.

CHAPTER-IV
ROLE IN WORLD POLITICS
The Bandung conference, in 1955, was the beginning of the political emergence of the third
world. Two nations whose social and economic systems were sharply opposed-China and
India-played a major role in promoting that conference and in changing the relation between
the third world and the industrial countries, capitalist and Communist. As a result of de-
colonialization, the United Nations, at first numerically dominated by European countries and
countries of European origin, was gradually transformed into something of a third world
forum. With increasing urgency, the problem of underdevelopment then became the focus of
a permanent, although essentially academic, debate. Despite that debate, the unity of the third
world remains hypothetical, expressed mainly from the platforms of international
conferences.

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 CHAPTER- V

ECONOMIC PROSPECTS
Foreign aid, and indeed all the efforts of existing institutions and structures, have failed to
solve the problem of underdevelopment. The United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) held in New Delhi in 1971 suggested that one percent of the
national income of industrialized countries should be devoted to aiding the third world. That
figure has never been reached, or even approximated. In 1972 the Santiago (Chile) UNCTAD
set a goal of a 6 percent economic growth rate in the 1970's for the underdeveloped countries.
But this, too, was not achieved. The living conditions endured by the overwhelming majority
of the 3 billion people who inhabit the poor countries have either not noticeably changed
since 1972 or have actually deteriorated.

13
Whatever economic development has occurred in the third world has not been distributed
fairly between nations or among population groups within nations. Most of the third world
countries that have managed to achieve substantial economic growth are those that produce
oil: Algeria, Gabon,
lran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and
Venezuela. They had the money to do so because after 1973 the Organization of Oil
producing Countries (OPEC), a cartel, succeeded in raising the price of oil drastically. Other
important raw materials are also produced by underdeveloped countries, and the countries
that produce them have joined in cartels similar in form to OPEC. For example, Australia,
Guinea, Guyana, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, Suriname, and Yugoslavia formed the Bauxite
International Association (BIA) in 1974; and Chile, Peru, Zaire, and Zambia formed a cartel
of copper producing countries in 1967. But even strategic raw materials like copper and
bauxite are not as essential to the industrialized countries as oil, and these cartels therefore
lack OPEC's strength; while the countries that produce cocoa and coffee (and other foods) are
even less able to impose their will. Indeed, among the countries that do not receive oil
revenues, only Brazil, the Ivory Coast, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have enjoyed
significant economic growth. And because the underdeveloped nations are collectively so
weak, the so-called "new economic order" proposed by some of them will probably remain a
phrase, and no more for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless, the relationship between the underdeveloped and the industrialized countries
has improved somewhat. In 1975 the nine-nation European Economic Community (EEC)
concluded an agreement, called the Lome Pact, with 46 African, Caribbean, and Pacific
(ACP) nations that exempted most ACP exports from tariffs. The Lome II Pact, signed in
1979 by the EEC and 57 ACP countries, consolidated and broadened the Lome I agreement-
for example by guaranteeing income from agricultural exports.
All international agencies agree that drastic action is required to improve conditions in third
world countries, including urban and rural public work projects to attack joblessness and
underemployment, institutional reforms essential for the redistribution of economic power,
agrarian reform, tax reform, and the reform of public funding. But, in reality, political and
social obstacles to reform are a part of the very nature of the international order and of most
third world regimes.

CHAPTER- VI

WHAT MAKES A NATION THIRD WORLD

Despite ever evolving definitions, the concept of the third world serves to identify countries
that suffer from high infant mortality, low economic development, high levels of poverty,
low utilization of natural resources, and heavy dependence on industrialized nations. These
are the developing and technologically less advanced nations of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and
Latin America. Third world nations tend to have economies dependent on the developed
countries and are generally characterized as poor with unstable governments and having high
rates of population growth, illiteracy, and disease. A key factor is the lack of a middle class

14
— with impoverished millions in a vast lower economic class and a very small elite upper
class controlling the country's wealth and resources. Most third world nations also have a
very large foreign debt.

Why is Greenland a Third World country?

In times of the Third World model Greenland was sealed off from international
commerce and Denmark was maintaining a strict monopoly on Greenlandic trade,
allowing only small scale barter (troaking) with Scottish whalers. During the 1950s
and 1960s the Danish government introduced an urbanization and modernization
program, aimed at creating an urban economic environment in Greenland, by
expanding the coastal towns. People from the surrounding small settlements were
rehoused in hastily built houses and modern fishing practices were introduced.

Why is rich Saudi Arabia a Third World country?

According to the old Three World Model, Saudi Arabia was not aligned with
the US nor was it part of the Soviet Union bloc, the Eastern Bloc. Saudi Arabia's
reserves of oil were discovered only in 1938 and development to exploit this
reserves began in 1941. Until then Saudi Arabia was a country with Arab tribal
culture. And even today Saudi Arabia is a very conservative country. It is run by a
royal and religious elite. Public expression of opinion about domestic political or
social matters is discouraged. There are no theaters or public exhibition of films.
There are no organizations such as political parties or labor unions to provide public
forums.

CHAPTER- VII
THIRD WORLDISM
Third Worldism is a political movement that argues for the unity of third-world nations against
first-world influence and the principle of non-interference in other countries' domestic affairs.
Groups most notable for expressing and exercising this idea are the Non-Aligned
Movement (NAM) and the Group of 77 which provide a base for relations and diplomacy
between not just the third-world countries, but between the third-world and the first and second
worlds. The notion has been criticized as providing a fig leaf for human-rights violations
and political repression by dictatorships.
Third-Worldism is a political concept and ideology that emerged in the late 1940s or early
1950s during the Cold War and tried to generate unity among the nations that did not want to
take sides between the United States and the Soviet Union. The political thinkers and leaders

15
of Third-Worldism argued that the North-South divisions and conflicts were of primary
political importance compared to the East-West opposition of the Cold War period. In the
Three-World Model, the countries of the First World were the ones allied to the United
States. These nations had, and still have, less political risk, better functioning democracy and
economic stability, as well as higher standard of living. The Second World designation
referred to the former industrial socialist states under the influence of the Soviet Union. The
Third World hence defined countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO, or the
Communist Bloc. The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with
colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia. It was also sometimes taken as
synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, connected to the world economic
division as "periphery" countries in the world system that is dominated by the "core"
countries. Third-Wordism was connected to new political movements following the
Decolonization and new forms of regionalism that emerged in the erstwhile colonies of Asia,
Africa, and the Middle-East, as well as in the older nation-states of Latin America : pan-
arabism, pan-africanism, pan-americanism and pan-asianism. The first period of the Third-
World movement, that of the "first Bandung Era", was led by the Egyptian, Indonesian and
Indian heads of states : Nasser, Sukarno and Nehru. They were followed in the 1960s and
1970s by a second generation of Third-Worldist governments that emphasized on a more
radical and revolutionary socialist vision, personified by the figure of Che Guevara. Finally at
the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, Third Worldism began to entered into a period of
decline. Several leaders have been associated with the Third-Woldism movement. * Gamal
Abdel Nasser * Jawaharlal Nehru * Ho Chi Minh * Kwame Nkrumah * Josip Broz Tito *
Houari Boumediene * Julius Nyerere * Salvador Allende * Robert Mugabe * Che Guevara *
Patrice Lumumba * Michael Manley * Sukarno * Muammar Gaddafi * Thomas Sankara

CHAPTER-VIII

THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT AID

During the Cold War, unaligned countries of the Third World were seen as potential allies by
both the First and Second World. Therefore, the United States and the Soviet Union went to
great lengths to establish connections in these countries by offering economic and military
support to gain strategically located alliances (e.g., United States in Vietnam or Soviet Union
in Cuba). By the end of the Cold War, many Third World countries had adopted capitalist or
communist economic models and continued to receive support from the side they had chosen.
Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the countries of the Third World have been the
priority recipients of Western foreign aid and the focus of economic development through
mainstream theories such as modernization theory and dependency theory.

16
By the end of the 1960s, the idea of the Third World came to represent countries in Africa,
Asia and Latin America that were considered underdeveloped by the West based on a variety
of characteristics (low economic development, low life expectancy, high rates of poverty and
disease, etc.). These countries became the targets for aid and support from governments,
NGOs and individuals from wealthier nations. One popular model, known as Rostow's stages
of growth, argued that development took place in 5 stages (Traditional Society; Pre-
conditions for Take-off; Take-off; Drive to Maturity; Age of High Mass Consumption). W.
W. Rostow argued that Take-off was the critical stage that the Third World was missing or
struggling with. Thus, foreign aid was needed to help kick-start industrialization and
economic growth in these countries.

FIG. Least Developed Countries in blue, as designated by the United Nations. Countries formerly
considered Least Developed in green.

CHAPTER- IX
THIRD WORLD GREAT DIVERGENCE & GREAT
CONVERGENCE

Many times there is a clear distinction between First and Third Worlds. When talking about the
Global North and the Global South, the majority of the time the two go hand in hand. People refer
to the two as "Third World/South" and "First World/North" because the Global North is more
affluent and developed, whereas the Global South is less developed and often poorer.
To counter this mode of thought, some scholars began proposing the idea of a change in world
dynamics that began in the late 1980s, and termed it the Great Convergence. As Jack A.
Goldstone and his colleagues put it, "in the twentieth century, the Great Divergence peaked

17
before the First World War and continued until the early 1970s, then, after two decades of
indeterminate fluctuations, in the late 1980s it was replaced by the Great Convergence as the
majority of Third World countries reached economic growth rates significantly higher than those
in most First World countries"
Others have observed a return to Cold War-era alignments (MacKinnon, 2007; Lucas, 2008), this
time with substantial changes between 1990–2015 in geography, the world economy and
relationship dynamics between current and emerging world powers; not necessarily redefining
the classic meaning of First, Second, and Third World terms, but rather which countries belong to
them by way of association to which world power or coalition of countries — such as G7,
the European Union, OECD; G20, OPEC, BRICS, ASEAN; the African Union, and the Eurasian
Union.

CONCLUSION

A phrase commonly used to describe a developing nation, but actually started as term used to
describe a country’s allegiance. A Third World country is a country whose views are not
aligned with NATO and capitalism or the Soviet Union and communism. The use of the term
Third World started during the Cold War and was used to identify which of three categories
the countries of the world aligned with. The First World meant that you aligned withe NATO
and capitalism, and the Second World meant you supported Communism and the Soviet
Union.
Developing nations are commonly referred to as Third World. These developing countries
can be found in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America. These countries were at one point
colonies which were formally lead by imperialism. The end of imperialism forced these

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colonies to survive on their own. The term was then affiliated to the economic situation of
these former colonies and not their social alliances to either capitalism or communism.
Third World, the technologically less advanced, or developing, nations of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, generally characterized as poor, having economies distorted by their
dependence on the export of primary products to the developed countries in return for
finished products. These nations also tend to have high rates of illiteracy, disease, and
population growth and unstable governments. The term Third World was originally intended
to distinguish the nonaligned nations that gained independence from colonial rule beginning
after World War II from the Western nations and from those that formed the former Eastern
bloc, and sometimes more specifically from the United States and from the former Soviet
Union (the first and second worlds, respectively). For the most part the term has not included
China. Politically, the Third World emerged at the Bandung Conference (1955), which
resulted in the establishment of the Nonaligned Movement. Numerically, the Third World
dominates the United Nations, but the group is diverse culturally and increasingly
economically, and its unity is only hypothetical. The oil-rich nations, such as Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, and Libya, and the newly emerged industrial states, such as Taiwan, South Korea,
and Singapore, have little in common with desperately poor nations, such as Haiti, Chad, and
Afghanistan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTERNET SOURCES:

 Tomlinson, B.R. (2003). “What was the Third World”, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(2):
307–321.
 Wolf-Phillips, Leslie (1987). “Why ‘Third World’?: Origin, Definition and Usage”, Third World
Quarterly, 9(4): 1311-1327.
 “Third World America”, MacLeans, September 14, 2010

BOOKS:

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 THE DARKER NATION: a people’s history of the third world, 2007, By- Dr.
Prashad Vijay.
 THE GLIPMES OF THE WORLD, By: Nehru Jawahar Lal.

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