Third World

Origination of the Third World

In 1952, Alfred Sauvy, a French sociologist and demographer, coined the term Third World. Originally, the term was tiers monde, and was used to describe the “third estate” of commoners who aspired to be similar to the first estate, or society's wealthy and elite. Hobsbawm posits that the notion of a third estate was later used to describe nations that did not belong to either the capitalist and postcolonial nations representing the first world or the socialist and communist nations comprising the second world. More specifically, Sachs shows that the first world represented countries that were either already industrialized as of 1945 or newly industrialized. These countries are generally described as capitalist or protocapitalist. For instance, the representatives of the G8 (United States, England, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Japan, and Canada) are considered the first world. The second world are either current or former communist and socialist countries and are characterized by state ownership of production, central planning, one-party rule, and economic connections with other second world countries.

In 1955, the Bandung Conference in Indonesia created the Non-Aligned Movement. During this conference, the term Third World became widely accepted to describe the members of the Non-Aligned Movement. The participants in the conference represented nations who considered themselves non-aligned with either the first or second world. These countries opposed colonialism and neocolonialism and were often newly emancipated from colonial powers. Representatives from countries such as China, India, Vietnam, Egypt, and Ghana agreed that they would develop economically through partnerships with each other, would nurture their own industries and infrastructure, protect and subsidize their businesses, refuse aid from foreign multinationals and countries, and limit international trade.

Although the original intent of these non-aligned countries was to become independent from first and second world hegemony, this vision of autonomy quickly evaporated. First, starting around the 1940s, global decreases in mortality rates due to such things [Page 1348]as the use of DDT and pharmaceutical advances contributed to a population explosion in some countries. Historically, in some countries, high fertility rates were countered by high mortality rates; but as mortality rates decreased, birth rates did not decrease. Additionally, Hobsbawm shows that the population increases were often not matched with economic development in some third world countries.

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