Plenary session of the 1955 Bandung Conference. Diplomats from Asian and African nations seated in a conference hall facing a speaker, who is not seen in the photo.
10 June 2022
The Third World comprises the developing nations of the world. It’s a somewhat dated term, coined during the Cold War when political scientists were dividing up the world into spheres of influence exercised by the superpowers. But the term has a more revolutionary origin, challenging the status quo of the established powers. The term was originally coined in French, Tiers Monde, by anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, who likened the developing and oppressed nations of the world to the pre-revolutionary Third Estate of France. Writing in L’Observateur of 14 August 1952, Sauvy said:
Car enfin ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut, lui aussi, être quelque chose.
(After all, this Third World, ignored, exploited, despised like the Third Estate, also wants to be something.)
It would take a few years for the term to start appearing in English, and when it did the underlying metaphor would shift. Instead of Sauvy’s metaphor of anti-colonial, revolutionary rumblings, in English usage the developing nations would be seen through a Cold War lens. One key element in that shift was the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement, which formally organized the developing nations into a bloc distinct from the two blocs led by the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Non-Aligned Movement would officially come into being in 1961, but the groundwork started to be laid at a conference of Asian and African nations held in 1955 at Bandung in Indonesia.
We have this use of third world bloc from an Associated Press piece about the Bandung Conference from 4 April 1955:
But some Asian observers believe Chou [En-Lai] is coming to Bandung with the hope of grabbing the leadership of the African-Asian world. A seat for Red China in the U.N. would fit in with these hopes.
There is also the belief among other Asian observers that Chou may try to swing the Bandung meeting toward a third world bloc led by Red China. These observers say Red China would rather lead such a bloc than remain in the Soviet orbit.
Nehru has said the conference will not take sides in the cold war between East and West.
This is not a use of the noun phrase third world as we know it. Third is modifying the phrase world bloc, a third bloc in the world. And the importance of the Cold War lens can be seen in a appearance of third world force in a United Press International piece from 1 December 1959 about a meeting between Conrad Adenauer of Germany and Charles De Gaulle of France. Here the third bloc is not the developing world, but the European nations other than the two superpowers. And instead of China, it is France that would be the putative leader of the imagined bloc:
The two leaders see eye-to-eye in many things, but Eckhardt disclosed they do not include De Gaulle’s concept of continental Europe as a third world force between “the Russians and the Anglo-Saxons.”
Again, third is modifying world force, and the developing nations are absent. What is important is the bloc’s/force’s relation to the superpowers, not who constitutes the bloc or force.
But by 1958 the phrase third world, as we know it today, had entered English parlance. There is this Associated Press piece of 25 January 1958 about a speech given by Eric Johnston, an Eisenhower-administration official:
Eric Johnston, foreign aid information coordinator, said the nation’s future rests with a third world—a billion Asians and Africans as yet uncommitted to either the Communist or the free world.
Johnston said Moscow is trying to lure the third world into its camp with economic aid.
Evidently, Johnston was the administration’s front man on this issue, giving speeches across the country on the subject. Here is an article from the Denver Post of 20 May 1958 where Johnston again defines the third world in Cold War terms:
Russia has stolen the economic weapons of the United States—trade and aid—in its campaign to win the “third world” of uncommitted nations born since World War II, Eric Johnston told more than 3,000 Parent-Teacher Assn. members here Monday night.
[...]
It is a fallacy, Johnston said, to think that the West can overcome the Communist threat “with our hands in our pockets and blinders on our eyes.”
“We need the third world today for our own national survival,” he said.
Johnston’s rhetoric was followed up by cash assistance to lure developing nations into the American fold. From an Associated Press piece of 6 September 1960 about US economic assistance to Latin American nations:
The American pledge was an answer to Brazil’s call for help for what the Brazilian delegate, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, called “the third world of underdeveloped peoples.”
Sauvy’s original anti-colonial spin on third world was lost in the English translation. But while it may not be present in the phrase, it still very much exists in reality.
Sources:
Associated Press. “U.S. Urged to Woo ‘3rd World.’” Miami Herald, 25 January 1958, 7-A. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Bradshaw, Stanford (Associated Press). “U.S. Pledges More Cash for Latin America.” Seattle Daily Times, 6 September 1960, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Clements, Olen (Associated Press). “Commies to Try to Get UN Seat.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 4 April 1955, 24. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Lee, Betty Jean. “Reds Use U.S. Aid Plan, Johnston Warns P-TA.” Denver Post, 20 May 1958, 27. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2014, s.v. First World, n. and adj.; second edition, s.v. Third World, n. (and adj.), second, adj. and n.2.
Sauvy, Alfred. “Trois Mondes, Une Planète” (“Three Worlds, One Planet”). L’Observateur, 14 August 1952, 14.
United Press International. “Adenauer Disagrees with De Gaulle” (1 December 1959). Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tennessee), 2 December 1959, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Indonesia, 1955. Public domain photo.