Lecture # 3: Why is the 3rd world underdeveloped?

course concerns
Trial Forum

Last time we were together, we discussed the topic of development and 3 ways we
may think of development

Why is the Third World Underdeveloped?

1. The Triangle of Trade

2. The Bretton Woods Institutions and their hand in the affairs of what came to
be known as the 3rd world,
3. how the term The Third World came about,
4. how colonialism gave way to neocolonialism following national struggles for
independence from colonial rule.

1. Triangle of trade

The Triangle of Trade: [also known as the triangle of Capital the most infamous
triangular trade route exited from the late 1500s until the early 1800s. This route involved
the carrying of slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between Europe, West Africa,
the Caribbean or American colonies and back again to European colonial powers. Later
the northern American colonies took over also profiting from this trade. Money and
weapons were brought to Coastal Africa, and these were used to buy people who were
then enslaved. Slaves were brought over from West Africa to the Caribbean and the
Americas. They were sold to buy raw materials and used as slave labour to produce cash
crops [raw materials]. These cash crops were shipped to the emerging industrial centres
in Europe, where they were turned into manufactured goods. These manufactured goods
were then sold in Africa to purchase more Africans who were then enslaved. [As the
prices of manufactured goods increases and the prices of raw materials decrease, this
helps put in place a perpetual cycle of uneven development]. Some get richer, others
become dispossessed of their lives, homes, wealth, resources and human capital.

The Political Economy of Slavery

Economic classes within communities were highly differentiated and their fortunes were
very much affected by their status within their communities whether in Europe, Africa or
the Americas.
However in Europe these fortunes were reinforced through a variety of discourses that
worked to justify and naturalize these practices.

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The Middle Passage: this was the stage in the triangular trade process that saw millions
of people from Africa shipped to the New World It was called the Middle Passage
because it was the time in-between for those people who were sold into slavery in their
voyage from West Africa to the Americas from freedom to enslavement.
Large companies or groups of private investors carried out this trade.

African kings, chiefs and mercenaries sold captives to Europeans who held several
coastal forts. The captives were usually marched to these ports along the western coast of
Africa,
The captives were held in barracoons
Each ship often had more than several hundred captives and around 30
crewmembers
Male captives often chained together
All captives were fed once a day

The crews task was to turn independent people into obedient slaves to do so they
inflicted a great deal of abuse at the same time they were careful with their investments.
Once they arrived to the Americas:
Intentional de-gendering of black men and women
Lack of social recognition and power
Objectification and rape of black men and women
Auctioned off, separated from families
Refusal of social recognition, unable to fulfill roles as mother, father, husband,
wife
Men and women were sexualized differently than the white population
Castrated, hanged, raped, separated from families/ sexual objects/reproduction of
labour power

People resisted in a variety of ways:

Suicide
Refusing food
Rebellion
Religious practices
Developing secret codes
Infanticide
Native languages & practices
Silence
Refusal
Infanticide
Deception
Escape

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These millions of captives were not considered human but cargo or goods
1 in 4 families in the US south had slaves
Even after international abolition internal slave trading and indentured labour continued.

2. The Bretton Woods Institutions and their hand in the affairs of what came to
be known as the 3rd world,

Post WW2: IMF/World Bank/GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade]

established in1945, another arm of the Bretton Woods, WTO [World Trade Organization]
was established in 1995.

The U.N. [United Nations] established in 1945 to replace the League of Nations.

The Bretton Woods System of international monetary management established the rules
for commercial and financial relations amongst the world's major industrial states. The
Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order
intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states.

IMF: grants short-term loans for the financing of balance of payments deficits.
The World Bank: offers long-term loans for the financing of specific programs and
projects.

3. How the term Third World came about

The term the third world came out of a consciousness of former colonies and developing
countries to bring attention to three issues:

1. their independence

2. to address their economic and social development

3. most importantly it developed out of the non alignment movement [NAM]

inaugurated at the Bandung conference (1955) to negotiate a path between a) the
liberal capitalism of the first world and b) the state socialism of the second world.

The term designated a relationship with the rest of the world [a term of resistance]
and came to signify a value instead [3rd best, lesser than and so on.
Why is the Third World Underdeveloped?

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4. Following struggles for independence by colonized countries, independence
still involved special relations between newly independent countries and their
former colonizers. [neo-colonialism]