International Development - History

History

Although international relations and international trade have existed for many hundreds of years, it is only in the past century that international development theory emerged as a separate body of ideas. More specifically, it has been suggested that 'the theory and practice of development is inherently technocratic, and remains rooted in the high modernist period of political thought that existed in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War'. Throughout the 20th century, before the concept of international development became a common word, four aspects were used to describe the idea:

• political and economic liberalism, and the significance of "free markets"
• social evolution in extremely hierarchized environment
• Marxist critiques of class and imperialism
• anti-colonial take on cultural differences and national self-determination