6 - The “Third World”

The Dominican Republic is a “Developing Country,” what is still at times called a “Third World” country. Although the term “Third World” remains in common usage, many people feel it is no longer quite politically correct.

Originally the term had not been intended to rank countries so much as to make a distinction between the two superpowers of the Cold War (along with their allies) and the rest of the world. The term was coined by French demographer and historian, Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in France in 1952. Sauvy was making a play on words. There is an older term–tiers etat–used in reference to French society during the period before the Revolution. The term referred to those marginalized individuals in society who did not have the privileges of either the nobility or the clergy. In creating the term “Third World,” Sauvy was making a distinction between two industrialized worlds–one capitalist and the other communist–and a “third world” which was, at the time, primarily agricultural and also clearly marginalized. Similar to the relationship between tiers etat and their social superiors in 18th century France, these nations lacked many of the comforts and privileges the residents of the industrialized world took for granted.

The term was later adopted by many African, Asian, and Latin American countries at the United Nations in order to distinguish themselves from the two super-power blocs. Some of these countries also defined themselves as “non-aligned,” in the sense of not being aligned with either of the super powers.

The United States and her allies–which included Canada, Western Europe, Australia, Japan and so on–were the “First World.” The Soviet bloc nations were the “Second World.” Everything else was the “Third World.”

That everything else turned out to be most of the people on the planet. It included all the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East (except for Israel), the Indian Sub-continent, most of Asia, and the Pacific rim (except for Australia and New Zealand). In all, those nations accounted for over 75% of the world’s population.

A lot of things have changed since the 1950s. The Soviet bloc, of course, no longer exists, and there is only one superpower left (although China may be evolving into a superpower). So the term “Third World” is passé. But the term did serve–and I believe continues to serve–a very important function. It stressed that, at least from the point of view of people living in the First and Second Worlds–the less than 25% of the world’s population fortunate enough to live in countries like the United States, Canada, France, or even Russia–from their perspective, these “Third World” countries are somehow different. They are not like “us.”

How those countries differ “from us” is a central topic of these essays, as well as why they differ from us. In order to understand the challenges developing countries face, we need to understand not only the conditions that exist in those nations but also how those conditions came about.