The Origins of the ‘Third World’: Alfred Sauvy and the Birth of a Key Global Post-War Concept

ABSTRACT

In 1952, French demographer Alfred Sauvy coined the term ‘Third World’, a neologism that expanded globally and became a key category of post-war thought. After the term's decline in the 1980s, decolonial studies and the new Cold War historiography revisited it, using it to ‘provincialize’ Cold War history. Although these approaches rightly note the Third World's historical importance as a concept, they neglect its genesis. This article contends that we cannot fully grasp the concept's global success without tracing it back to Sauvy's initial semantically rich conceptualisation. First, Sauvy gave the concept a hybrid political and scientific content, allowing both activists and social scientists to adopt the term. Second, Sauvy associated the ‘Third World’ with other key Cold War concepts (anticolonial revolution; underdevelopment; third way), which successfully expressed contemporary concerns. This article sheds light on an apparent paradox: although Sauvy was a French pro-colonialist, he developed a concept that underscored the agency of the ‘wretched of the earth’, enabling anti-colonial activists to appropriate the concept. However, Sauvy presented the Third World as a protagonist of post-war revolution in order to oppose the US notion of ‘underdevelopment’, which depicted ‘underdeveloped’ nations as the passive victims of colonial powers.

KEYWORDS:

• Third World
• cultural Cold War
• post-war period
• Alfred Sauvy
• conceptual history

Acknowledgements

The publication of this article was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Ecole Française d’Athènes (EFA). I am also grateful to Jessica Kirstein for her editing of this article.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. All quotes from this article are the author's translations.

2 Malley, The Call from Algeria; Dirlik, The Postcolonial Aura; Prashad, The Darker Nations; Young, “Postcolonialism”; and Lee, Making a World after Empire (on decolonial studies). Westad, Reviewing the Cold War; Hahn and Heiss, Empire and Revolution; McMahon, The Cold War in the Third World; Lüthi, Cold Wars; Field et al., Latin America and the Global Cold War (on the New Cold War History). Christiansen and Scarlett, “Introduction,” 3; Christiaens, “Europe at the Crossroads of Three Worlds,” 932–54 (on the concept of the Third World and its importance).

3 Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World?,” 307–21; Mintz, “On the Concept of a Third World,” 377–82.

4 Solarz, “Third World,” 1561–73; Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, 76–95; Jordheima and Neumann, “Empire, Imperialism and Conceptual History.” Solarz's ‘semantic richness’ is inspired by Koselleck's notion of a ‘carrying capacity’ of ‘basic concepts’.

5 Conrad, “Enlightenment in Global History”; Subrahmanyam, Europe's India; Raj, Relocating Modern Science (on the concept of the ‘co-production’ of knowledge).

6 Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World; Albuquerque, “Les scientistes sociaux latino-américains.”

7 Kontler, “Concepts, Contests and Contexts”; Schulz-Forberg, “The Spatial and Temporal Layers.”

8 Robcis, The Law of Kinship.

9 Scott Johnson, “The French Revolution,” 190. According to Christophe Kalter, the author of one of the best books on European Third Worldism, the concept of the ‘Third World’ revealed Sauvy's implicit desire to see the Third World emancipated from colonisation. However, this desire was tainted by Eurocentrism because, according to Sauvy, the Third World needed to be freed only from Western Enlightenment. Kalter, “A Shared Space of Imagination,” 25.

10 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14.

11 Ibid. ‘[…] the underdeveloped feudal-type country [can] move much more easily to the communist regime than to democratic capitalism’. Sauvy, “La rémuneration progressive”; Sauvy, Le Plan Sauvy. However, Sauvy did not view underdeveloped countries’ shift to communism as a solution for poverty and inequality. According to him, the Soviet economy was characterised by its lack of ‘equity’ and a dearth of viable solutions for crucial economic and social problems. Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud à Charles de Gaulle, 41. He adds in this autobiographical text: ‘[The communists] always tried to avoid compromising with reality […] and to stay faithful to their theology’.

12 Barton, Reproductive Citizens; Lyons, The Civilizing Mission; Robcis, The Law of Kinship.

13 Lévy, Alfred Sauvy; Keyfitz, “Le premier monde,” 1513–31; Chesnais, “Le nombre et le bonheur des hommes,” 1575–88; Bairoch, “Du Tiers-Monde,” 1485–503; Laszlo, Alfred Sauvy; Dumont, “Général de Gaulle”; Chesnais, “Le nombre et le bonheur des hommes,” 1578: ‘Sauvy is anything but a man of dogma; he mistrusts universalist theories’. Calot, “Alfred Sauvy, 1898-1990,” 729: ‘He never wished to take up a ministerial or political post. His independence was precious to him! His main concerns were scientific […]’. Gérard Calot was INED's former director. Rosental, L'intelligence démographique; Achard, “Racisme et démographie”; Desrosières, “Démographie, science et société” are notable exceptions.

14 Sauvy, Leçon inaugurale.

15 Nord, France's New Deal; Lyons, The Civilizing Mission; Connelly, Fatal Misconceptions.

16 Hecht and Edwards, “The Technopolitics of Cold War,” 271–314; Chastain and Lorek, Itineraries of Expertise.

17 Connelly, Fatal Misconceptions; Calandra, Il corpo del Caribe.

18 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 121 (quoting Sauvy). See Nord, France's New Deal (for a more critical analysis of Sauvy's intellectual evolution).

19 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 88–9. Sauvy spoke with great admiration of Alexis Carrel and his French Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, arguing that INED was ‘built upon grandiose foundations,’ meaning the Carrel Foundation.

20 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 121; Camiscioli, Reproducing the French Race; Koos, “Gender, Anti-Individualism, and Nationalism”; Roberts, Civilization without Sexes, chapter 4.

21 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 121. See Desrosières, “Démographie, science et société” on the influence of the ‘Polytechnic School mould’ on the INED when Sauvy was the head of the institution: ‘Many of the main INED researchers were educated at the Polytechnic School, formed in this peculiar mould of a state science oriented towards action rather than epistemological hypotheses’.

22 The Polytechnic School's nickname.

23 Dard, ‘Voyage à l'intérieur d'X-Crise,’ 132–47.

24 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 59–81. According to Sauvy, Spinasse was a good and intelligent economist but did not wish to oppose Léon Blum's economic policy, which, according to Sauvy, was inspired by Jacques Duboin's ‘abundantism’ to foster better wealth distribution. Sauvy was particularly critical of the Popular Front's wage increases and the reduction of weekly working hours to forty.

25 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 59 and 71.

26 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 85–6. Before joining Reynaud's cabinet, Sauvy had already been his consultant for his speech at the Chamber of Deputies, a few days before Blum fell out of power in June 1937. Reynaud's intervention was very critical of Spinasse, whom Sauvy was working for at that time. In his autobiography, Sauvy tried to justify his support for Reynaud by saying that he had always been loyal to him and not to Spinasse.

27 Chauvière, “L'expert et les propagandistes,” 1441–51; Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, chapters 2–3.

28 Nord, France's New Deal, 97.

29 Cohen, “Du corporatisme au keynésianisme,” 555–92.

30 Prost, “L'évolution de la politique familiale,” 10.

31 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 123.

32 Lévy, Alfred Sauvy; Keyfitz, “Le premier monde,” 1513–31; Chesnais, “Le nombre et le bonheur des hommes,” 1575–88; Calot, “Alfred Sauvy, 1898–1990”; Bairoch, “Du Tiers-Monde,” 1485–503.

33 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 118–21. As Rosental explains, demography was not Sauvy's first choice as a profession; political economy was. This was logical because demography was not recognised as a scientific discipline until after the Second World War. But Sauvy had been very interested in demography since the late 1920s/early 1930s. Moreover, in the mid-1940s, his role as Director of the INED gave Sauvy a great deal of autonomy, and he had a significant impact on government decisions and policymaking. After 1945, France's depopulation was a major concern. His position also allowed him to combine all of the activities (scientific, political, public outreach) that he had been developing but had previously slowed down his scientific career. It also finally led him to the Collège de France.

34 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 59. Sauvy writes that he discovered his own mission and destiny when he first met Reynaud: ‘Before the inexperienced, charming young man, in search of information, I felt overwhelmed. […] From that day onward, the aim of my entire life became clear to me: [I had to] “enlighten [political] action.” […] I think that no personal ambition was guiding me then, the desire to enlighten the pilots or future pilots [of the nation] was appealing enough’.

35 Sauvy, L'opinion publique, chapter 1. Sauvy wrote the volume on public opinion for PUF's (French University Press) iconic collection Que sais-je? [What do I know?]. He wrote about the relation between ‘experts’ and public opinion: ‘Sometimes, a branch's technicians [statisticians, doctors] separate themselves from the rest of society, from the “public,” regarding issues on which a scientific consensus has been obtained, without reaching the broader public. […] this opposition sometimes arises between a rational, dispassionate observer, and the rest of mankind, more spontaneous, less capable of sound judgement. In this case, the aim is less about criticizing public opinion and more about denouncing common prejudice and insufficient education on scientific issues that are also everyone's everyday concerns’. Sauvy considered universal suffrage to be a type of ‘public opinion’ that must be enlightened by ‘experts’.

36 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘Underdeveloped countries’, ‘cycle of deprivation’, ‘investments’, ‘population growth’, ‘less youth mortality’.

37 Sauvy, “8 mai 1958: Voyages au Maroc.” As a populationist, Sauvy's beliefs blended nationalism and colonial imperialism, viewing individual well-being as secondary to national affairs. According to him, individuals’ main mission was to ensure a thriving national (metropolitan) community. For example, in 1958, when Sauvy visited Morocco, he assessed France's contribution to Morocco's ‘advancement’ and linked it to the natalist policies that applied to metropolitan populations living in colonised territories: ‘The material advancement achieved [in Morocco] during the last forty years is an eloquent testament to French citizens’ capacity to create, to build, to promote, when they are not handicapped by the French economy's Malthusianism’.

38 Sauvy, “Editorial,” 5. In 1946, in the editorial of the first issue of INED's journal Population, which introduced the INED and explained its raison d'être, Sauvy wrote: ‘The long-neglected population issue is receiving increasing attention. […] Today, we see the nation confronting particularly heavy challenges, when wanting to ensure its security, the cohesion of its empire, to help its aged citizens and hold its role in modern civilization. Without a doubt, French opinion has not yet grasped the close, direct link between the current acute difficulties we are experiencing, and [depopulation]’. Achard, “Racisme et démographie” (for a critical discourse analysis of Sauvy's public tribunes that demonstrates that his nationalist and neo-colonialist position was legitimised by his supposedly ‘apolitical’ stance).

39 Barton, Reproductive Citizens; Lyons, The Civilizing Mission; Robcis, The Law of Kinship.

40 Robcis, Law of Kinship, chapter 1.

41 Charbit and Béjin, “IX - La pensée démographique,” 465–505; Desrosières, “Démographie, science et société” (on the convergence of populationism, nationalism, and the colonial project).

42 Lévy, Alfred Sauvy, chapter 1 (on Sauvy's training years). Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 206. In his autobiography, Sauvy comments on his close collaboration with the ultraconservative and racist natalist Fernand Boverat, who was also secretary-general of the National Alliance to Increase the French Population, in the following terms: ‘I often fought side by side with him in order to obtain a vote in favor of natality legislation. […] [He was] an Apostle and a puritan, a bourgeois conservative, and his whole life was dedicated to one cause […] the [nation's] resurrection through natality’.

43 Ibid., 136 and 290. In the same autobiographical text, Sauvy says that he did not participate directly in drafting the 1939 Family Code, but the law was made possible by Sauvy's decree-law of November 12, 1938. Indeed, Sauvy's decree-law, which was the first to link family allowances to the number of children a family had. The allowance was increased if the mother did not have a professional occupation and decoupled the allowances from the family's global revenues. The 1939 Family Code did the same. Both Sauvy's decree-law and the 1939 Family Code favoured middle – and high-revenue families that had more than three children. See INSEE, “Donner un nouveau souffle,” on the relevance of Sauvy's decree-law as an antecedent for the 1939 Family Code and the striking continuities between them.

44 Rosental, “L'argument démographique,” 5.

45 Daladier Memorandum (21 December 1939), quoted in Capuano, Vichy et la famille, 38; Mauco, “Le Code de la famille,” 75; Dewhurst Lewis, “The Strangeness of Foreigners.” Mauco was one of Sauvy's close collaborators. Along with Fernand Boverat and the eugenicist Alfonse Laundry (another of Sauvy's associates), they served on the Daladier government's High Committee on Population (created in 1939). The 1939 Family Code was written at the same time as the new Foreigners’ Status, which strictly limited migration to France.

46 Charbit and Béjin, “IX - La pensée démographique,” 465–505.

47 Adler, “Demography at Liberation,” 183–93.

48 Immigration was one of the most recurrent issues Sauvy raised in the numerous editorials and short texts he published in INED's journal Population.

49 Lyons, The Civilizing Mission, 34. As Lyons demonstrates, even though Sauvy did not subscribe to Mauco's racism and antisemitism, he was convinced that immigrants and refugees from Africa and Asia were ‘culturally’ impossible to ‘assimilate’ into the French nation.

50 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14.

51 Drouard, “Le Haut Comité de la Population,” 171–97. Despite his short time in power between 1945 and early 1946, De Gaulle paid particular attention to population and family policies. He created key institutions, including the INED, which determined French demography's fate for decades to come according to the natalist and Catholic milieu's demands.

52 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 111 (citing Sauvy's words).

53 Liauzu, “Immigration, colonisation et racisme,” 10.

54 Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization, 59.

55 Sauvy, “Evaluation des besoins de l'immigration française,” 97–8. There, he states that in addition to immigrants’ age and sex, a key selection criterion is their capacity to adapt, ‘to put forth an effort’ and be assimilated into the French nation. Vincent, “Vieillissement de la population,” 232–40. Paul Vincent, Sauvy's collaborator at the INED, only considered immigration that came from Belgium, Holland, and Italy to be viable. Spanish immigrants were feared for their political/revolutionary commitment and considered an undesirable choice. Immigration from Africa or Asia was out of the question.

56 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 116 (citing Bideberry, Rapport sur l'immigration). As Rosental explains, Sauvy and Bideberry shared views on ‘undesired immigration’.

57 Lyons, The Civilizing Mission, 33.

58 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘Algeria, […] Ceylan and India, […] Egypt and Tunisia […] existing non-modern societies’.

59 Chevalier, “Bilan d'une immigration,” 137; Maspero, “Quand la politique française d'immigration,” 172–3. In the late 1940s, ten to thirty thousand Italians migrated to France per year. From 1947 to 1950, more than 300,000 Algerians migrated to metropolitan France.

60 Chevalier, Le problème démographique nord-africain; Colin, “Louis Chevalier,” 197–8.

61 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14; Sauvy, “Démographie: Le suicide de l'homme blanc?”. See Bousquet, “L'Islam” on INED and the Population journal's concern about high birth rates in Muslim countries, which they attributed to religion and cultural ‘rudeness’.

62 Chevalier, Le problème démographique nord-africain, 184 and 213. ‘From an ethnic point of view, we need to understand whether the North African ethnicity is supported by a certain civilisation, that is to say, a language, customs, a religion, a general behaviour, and even a mentality, decisively reject or are hostile to what can be considered the French ethnicity. […] In the coming years, there is a risk of creating a dangerous and totally inassimilable minority in France because this minority is voluntarily unassimilated […]’.

63 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 121. Connelly quotes François Boverat, Sauvy's confidant and another figurehead of French populationism. In 1952, Boverat said: ‘If one has to consider France and Algeria as interconnected […] there will no longer be any possibility of planning a pro-family and pro-natalist policy in France: in the future millions of Muslims would come to fill our empty spaces’.

64 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14: ‘It is understandable that this demographic increase should be accompanied by significant investments […] vital investments’.

65 Draesch et al., La Question algérienne.

66 Ibid.

67 Sauvy, “Le sous-développement économique,” 97–120; Scott Johnson, “The French Revolution,” 196.

68 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. In ‘Trois mondes,’ Sauvy cites and analyses Algeria as well as Ceyla, India, Egypt, Tunisia, and China.

69 Ibid. ‘Pressure is constantly increasing in the human boiler’; ‘mathematic fatality’; ‘a slow and irresistible, humble and ferocious push towards life’.

70 Ibid. As a conservative thinker, Sauvy did not sympathise with revolutions, anticolonial or otherwise. Moreover, in ‘Three Worlds,’ he conceived of revolution in demographic terms (uncontrolled population growth), described it in derogatory language (‘tomorrow's disaster,’ ‘explosion […] or trouble’), and associated it with negative consequences (‘misery,’ ‘hunger,’ ‘today's sufferings’). Sauvy, “8 mai 1958: Voyages au Maroc.” In this travel report Sauvy wrote after his stay in the newly independent Morocco, he praises Morocco's peaceful and negotiated national emancipation, as opposed to Algeria's war against France. Sauvy lauded the fact that Morocco maintained its links with France and millions of French people remained in Morocco after it gained independence.

71 On the French Revolution and its history as a key reference in post-war French intellectual debate, see Scott Johnson, “The French Revolution.”

72 Costantini, Mission civilisatrice.

73 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. Sauvy's view was evolutionary. The ‘third world’ was ‘the first in the chronology,’ ‘the bulk of the troops,’ ‘feudal type countries’ as opposed to the first and the second worlds, which were the ‘vanguards,’ ‘struggling to possess [the Third World]’. Poussou, “Alfred Sauvy (1898–1990),” 515–6: ‘[Sauvy] has always viewed historical demography favorably […] because, according to him, it could respond to his fundamental concern: ensuring the future of nations by understanding their demographic mechanisms’.

74 Tabah, “La population algérienne,” 446.

75 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 319–21; Marseille, “L’investissement public en Algérie,” 190; Tabah, “La population algérienne.” This thesis appears in several of Sauvy's writings and in articles by INED's permanent or associated researchers (Marseille, Tabah, Chevalier) in the journal Population. In the late 1940s, Louis Chevalier first underscored the need for massive French investments in Algeria in The North-African Demographic Problem. Sauvy also highlighted the need for substantial French investments in Algeria and other North African French colonies in ‘Three Worlds’ in 1952 and in opinion columns that he wrote later for the magazine L'Express.

76 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. Sauvy also states it from the very first lines of his ‘Three Worlds’ opinion column. ‘We readily speak of the two worlds, of their possible war, their coexistence, etc., forgetting all too often that there is a third world, the most important one […]. This is the group of what are called, in UN style, the underdeveloped countries’.

77 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘Since the preparation for war is the number one [US and USSR] concern, secondary concerns such as world hunger should be given only enough attention to avoid an explosion or, more precisely, to avoid a disturbance that could jeopardise the number one objective. But when one thinks of the enormous mistakes that conservatives have so often made in the matter of human patience, one can have little confidence in the ability of Americans to control the popular fire. Neophytes of domination, mystics of free enterprise to the point of conceiving it as an end, they have not yet clearly perceived that underdeveloped countries of the feudal type could pass much more easily to the communist regime than to democratic capitalism’.

78 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘Population growth [in the Third World] should be accompanied by major investments to adapt the container to the content […] vital investments [could be] […] a sovereign remedy […] [but that money is currently] slowly going here to the obligations of the Atlantic pact, there to feverish constructions of weapons, which will be out of fashion in three years’.

79 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 295. Here, Sauvy explains that he ‘knew nothing about the UN’ and was very ‘naïve,’ but he also says that he was ‘unexpectedly lucky,’ because the UN experience was ‘very revealing’.

80 See Desrosières, “Démographie, science et société” on the specificities of French demography and its differences from the Anglo-Saxon (both British and US) tradition.

81 See previous section. Among other reasons because France was competing with other Northern European countries, as well as with the US, to attract the same ‘chosen’ immigration (mainly Italian and German and Central European Jews).

82 Rosental, L'intelligence démographique, 111-117.

83 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 117.

84 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 117; Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 308. In the latter, Sauvy summarises his late 1940–1950s international trajectory in the section title ‘Ni Washington ni Moscou’ [Neither Washington nor Moscow]. See also the following section on Sauvy's ‘third way’ critical of both the US and the USSR.

85 Frank Notestein (1947–1948), Pascal Whelpton (1950–1952), John Durand (1953–1965).

86 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14.

87 Rist, Le développement; Arndt, “Economic Development,” 457–66; Arndt, Economic Development.

88 Mandle, “Marxist Analyses,” 865–76.

89 Rist, Le développement, 117–20.

90 Ibid.

91 Wolf-Phillips, “Why Third World?,” 106.

92 Latham, Modernization as Ideology and The Right Kind of Revolution; Cullather, The Hungry World; Connelly, Fatal Misconception. US theorisation of ‘underdevelopment’ was key to US modernisation theory.

93 Arndt, “Economic Development,” 460.

94 Rist, Le développement, 131.

95 Notestein, “The Economics of Population.”

96 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 123.

97 Bashford, Global Population, 17.

98 Sauvy, “Le faux problème,” 447–62.

99 Sauvy, “Introduction,” 13–7.

100 Lévy, Alfred Sauvy, 64: ‘[Sauvy was a] Malthusian in China. In France, he is a populationist’.

101 Sauvy, “Introduction à l'étude des pays sous-développés,” 601. In a 1951 article, Sauvy explicitly criticised the concept of ‘underdevelopment,’ as well as its translation into French as ‘too literal a translation of the fashionable English expression, which should be replaced by “backward countries”’. His use of the concept of ‘backwardness’ reveals Sauvy's view: the lack of economic development stems mainly from resistance and ‘backward mentalities,’ which European forces had difficulty eradicating (the consequences of the Cold War's consequences, analysed below, were another reason).

102 Sauvy, “Introduction,” 14.

103 Ibid., 15; and Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14: ‘It is understandable that this demographic increase should be accompanied by significant investments to adapt the container to the content. However, these vital investments cost a lot more than 68 francs per person. They come up against the financial wall of the Cold War’.

104 Sauvy, “Evolution récente,” 15. In this text, Sauvy presents the edited volume Le Tiers-monde, développement et sous-développement. In it, he argues that there is definite technological progress in the French Union but population growth and increased nativity (‘exuberant populations’) must be brought under control, since they are obstructing the economic development that metropolitan France has fostered.

105 Sauvy, “8 mai 1958: voyages au Maroc.”

106 Sauvy, “Evolution récente,” 15.

107 Chevalier, The North African Demographic Problem; Tabah, “La population algérienne.” The types and uses of ‘vital investments’ are more thoroughly presented in Tabah's 1956 article on Algeria. The idea first appeared in Chevalier's The North African Demographic Problem. Sauvy commissioned both studies, and in various Population editorials and opinion columns, he summarised Chevalier's and Tabah's conclusions and made them his own.

108 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 319. In his autobiography, Sauvy referred to his 1954 L'Express article, where he calculated the cost of ‘vital investments’ for France to maintain Algeria under its control. ‘The efforts France had to make were considerable and the dilemma was clear: either we [massively invested and] elevated North Africans to our level, or we gave them their liberty. […] I did not express my choice [in the written article], but personally, I was in favor of making the [economic] sacrifices’ (as opposed to a young man he overheard and who wanted to give up Algeria, even before the war had started).

109 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘So, let us defend the least defensible beet and alcohol privileges’.

110 Ibid. ‘Let us provide large amounts [of money] for road construction, so that Sunday evening trips back to bourgeois neighbourhoods become easier’.

111 Ibid.

112 Ibid. ‘[Third world] population growth should be accompanied by major investments to adapt the container to the content. But these vital investments cost much more than 68 francs per person [the price of a vaccine]. They come up against the financial wall of the Cold War. […] Do you not hear the cries from the Côte d’Azur that reach us from the other coast of the Mediterranean, from Egypt or Tunisia? Do you think that these are only palace revolutions or the rumblings of a few ambitious people in search of power? No, no, the pressure is constantly increasing in the human cauldron; there is a sovereign remedy for today's sufferings, for tomorrow's disasters [vital investments]; you know it; it is slowly flowing here in the obligations of the Atlantic pact, there in the feverish construction of weapons that will be out of fashion in three years’.

113 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud. As his autobiographical texts also clearly state, Sauvy's public interventions aimed to educate the French public and orient their political choices as well as French public policy.

114 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘The feudal-type country much more easily can become communist that capitalist. […] Soviets are afraid of nothing more than to see Western Europe turning to communism. […] [They prefer] a good Chinese […] trained in Moscow and knowing the bourgeoisie only through the correct and pure version of it transmitted there’.

115 Ibid.

116 However, the NAM was created in Belgrade, and several European countries were affiliated with it.

117 Sauvy, De Paul Reynaud, 304–5.

118 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘As preparation for war is the number one concern, secondary concerns such as world hunger should only receive attention to the extent that is just sufficient to avoid the explosion or, more precisely, to avoid a disturbance likely to compromise the no. 1 objective’.

119 Ibid. ‘The Soviets fear nothing more than seeing Western Europe turn to communism’.

120 Ibid.

121 Contrary to Sauvy's assertions, from the 1940s onwards the US government departments and agencies responsible for foreign relations and domestic security were particularly worried about the risk of communism spreading both in ‘underdeveloped countries’ and ‘inside the United States’.

122 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14.

123 Tomlinson, “What Was the Third World?,” 307–21. By contrast, Indian economic historian B. R. Tomlinson sees Sauvy's text as a pure reflection of the Cold War and its main conflict.

124 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14. ‘What matters to each of the two worlds is conquering the third or at least having it on its side. All the troubles of coexistence come from there’.

125 Ibid.

126 Ibid.

127 Ibid. ‘Class legislation,’ ‘cycle of misery,’ ‘the cries that reach us from the other side of the Mediterranean,’ ‘the sufferings of today […] catastrophes of tomorrow,’ ‘human solidarity,’ ‘Do not remain insensitive,’ ‘ignored, exploited, despised world […] that also wants to be something’.

128 Connelly, Fatal Misconception, 154.

129 Nord, France's New Deal, 188.

130 Sauvy, “Trois mondes,” 14.

131 Lyons, The Civilizing Mission, 35.