Third World et al

Hi all.

When has this way of describing "undeveloped countries" (and that is another euphemism) has started? what triggered it?
What were said countries called before, considering there was a knowledge they existed?

Gracias!

As always, wikipedia

"As always"?! Your blind faith in all things wiki is, perhaps, misplaced, Shuffaluff.

A less cocksure and more considered viewpoint is found in the first paragraph here.

Neither of those articles notes that Sauvy's originally coinage is the French tiers monde.

See the OED: "La conférence tenue à Bandoeng en avril 1955, par les délégués de vingt-neuf nations asiatiques et africaines . . . manifeste l'accès, au premier plan de la scène politique internationale, de ces peuples qui constituent un 'Tiers Monde' entre les 'deux blocs' selon l'expression d'A. Sauvy."

The OED also tells us that in 1870 Dickens wrote, "Triumphs of engineering skill . . . are to change the whole condition of an undeveloped country."

There is a very funny scene in "Yes Minister" which discusses the correct terminology for what was then changing from the Third World to the Developing World, undeveloped being discarded as patronising. The joke is that when the "developing world" becomes fed up with that label the next one has already been agreed on – human resource rich countries. I can't find the youtube link.

tonya, the problem is that the wikipedia article gives an exact citation to what it believes is the first recorded use and that the paragraph at your link is entirely unsourced. "Some believe" :"others situate" "Still others" but without a footnote. Who disagrees with the (universally accepted as far as I have ever known) attribution to Sauvy? On what basis? No way of finding out from that article.

Actually, the politically correct (and original term), was not "underdeveloped countries", but "developing" ones.

and original

If that means that you think that "developing countries" preceded "underdeveloped countries", my recollection is different. My recollection is that it went from underveloped to developing for euphemistic reasons. It's a little hard for me to see why people would have started to use "underdeveloped countries" if "developing countries" was already in use.

Thank you all for the replies. Did not mean to raise? rise? a controversy.

Fair comment, Vinny.