The Third World: Origins of a Cold War Term

“Third World” sounds like a word for poor countries. It did not start that way. A French thinker coined it in 1952 for countries with no voice in the Cold War.

This lesson follows the word from its birth to its fade. Along the way it meets Bandung, Belgrade and the Non-Aligned Movement.

1Who coined “Third World”, and what did he mean?

The French demographer Alfred Sauvy used the term in 1952. It appeared in the magazine L’Observateur on 14 August 1952. In French it was “tiers monde”.

Sauvy was talking about countries that played a small role in world trade and politics. He compared them to the Third Estate. That was the group of commoners in France before the Revolution.

The Third Estate had real needs but no say in how France was run. Sauvy wrote that this “ignored, exploited, scorned” Third World also wanted to become something. It was a political cry, not a money label.

• Coined by Alfred Sauvy, a French demographer, in 1952.
• Modelled on France’s Third Estate.
• First meaning: countries with little voice.

2What were the three worlds?

The Cold War split the world into blocs. The First World was the United States and its allies, such as NATO members. The Second World was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

The Third World was everyone else who kept out of both camps. Many of these were new nations. They had lately won freedom from colonial rule in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Strictly, the grouping was political. Some countries did not fit neatly. Cuba, for example, was often counted as Third World even though it leaned towards the Soviet side.

• First World: US and allies. Second World: USSR and Warsaw Pact.
• Third World: neither bloc.
• A political grouping, not an economic one.

3What was the Bandung Conference?

From 18 to 24 April 1955, Asian and African leaders met in Bandung, Indonesia. Most of their states were newly independent. Twenty-nine countries took part.

Together they spoke for about 1.5 billion people. That was 54 percent of the world’s population. Indonesia, Burma, India, Ceylon and Pakistan organised the meeting.

Its aims were plain. It wanted Afro-Asian economic and cultural cooperation. It also opposed colonialism. Sukarno and Nehru were key organisers.

Bandung did not create a bloc with rules. Yet it showed that newly free nations could meet on their own terms. That idea fed the next step.

• 18-24 April 1955, in Bandung, Indonesia.
• 29 countries, about 54% of the world’s people.
• Aims: cooperation and anti-colonialism.

4How did the Non-Aligned Movement begin?

The word “non-alignment” was first used at the United Nations in 1950. India and Yugoslavia used it. Both refused to take sides in the alliances that grew out of the Korean War.

In 1961, drawing on the principles of Bandung, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally set up in Belgrade. The first summit met in September 1961.

Five leaders led the effort. They were Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sukarno of Indonesia.

Fidel Castro was not one of them. He later became the movement’s spokesman. His Havana Declaration of 1979 set out its goals. Today the movement has 120 member countries.

• “Non-alignment” first used at the UN in 1950 by India and Yugoslavia.
• NAM founded in Belgrade, September 1961.
• Founders: Tito, Nasser, Nehru, Nkrumah, Sukarno.
• Castro joined the story later, in 1979.

5Why did the meaning drift?

Most Third World countries were poor and not yet industrial. So the label slowly picked up an economic meaning. It turned into a stereotype, and sometimes an unkind way to speak of developing countries.

The label never fitted cleanly. China was called Third World for decades before it grew rapidly in the 21st century. Some thinkers, such as Raul Prebisch and Walter Rodney, also linked the Third World to the “periphery” of the world economy.

Then the Cold War ended in 1991. With no Second World, the three-world idea made little sense. Newer terms took over. These include “developing countries”, “least developed countries” and “Global South”.

None of these terms is exact either. There is no clear, agreed definition of the Third World, and the same fuzziness follows its replacements.

• Poverty made the label stick as an economic one.
• No agreed definition ever existed.
• After 1991: developing countries and Global South.

6What are the exam traps?

• Do not say “Third World” always meant poor. It first meant non-aligned.
• Bandung (1955) was a conference. NAM (1961) was the movement.
• Castro was not a founding leader of NAM.
• Sauvy was a French demographer, not a statesman like Nehru or Tito.

Practise a past paper question: CDS-I 2023 General Knowledge, Q111 on NAM’s core leadership.