What were all the countries of the First, Second and Third Worlds, when WWII ended?
score:9
The phrase "Third World" was first coined in 1952 by Alfred Sauvy, so asking "what were the countries in each 'world' at the end of WWII" is a bit of an anachronism. It's also a bit fraught to ask whether Poland or East Germany should have been viewed as communist countries immediately after WWII, before the Soviet-backed communist parties in each country had fully consolidated their power. (It sure seems like we should in hindsight, but this was not as obvious at the time.) And, of course, most countries in Africa were not independent at this time. Despite these difficulties, though, we press on.
Sauvy's original article, a bit surprisingly, does not appear to be available online in English; but it is available in French. He doesn't carefully define what he means by "First World" or "Second World", since his focus is on the "Third World". Here are some pertinent excerpts (bolding mine):
Nous parlons volontiers des deux mondes en présence, de leur guerre possible, de leur coexistence, etc., oubliant trop souvent qu’il en existe un troisième, le plus important, et en somme, le premier dans la chronologie. C’est l’ensemble de ceux que l’on appelle, en style Nations Unies, les pays sous-développés. ...
Ce qui importe à chacun des deux mondes, c’est de conquérir le troisième ou du moins de l’avoir de son côté. Et de là viennent tous les troubles de la coexistence.
Le capitalisme d’Occident et le communisme oriental prennent appui l’un sur l’autre. Si l’un d’eux disparaissait, l’autre subirait une crise sans précédent. La coexistence des deux devraient être une marche vers quelque régime commun aussi lointain que discret.
which translates roughly as:
We talk freely of two worlds in existence, of their possible war, of their coexistence, etc., forgetting too often that there exists a third world, the largest, and really the first chronologically. This is the group of those countries that the United Nations calls underdeveloped. ...
What matters to each of the two worlds is to conquer the third, or at least to have it on its side. And from there comes all the problems of coexistence.
The capitalism of the West and the communism of the East bear on each other. If one of them disappeared, the other would suffer an unprecedented crisis. The coexistence of the two should be a step towards some common regime as distant as it is unclear.
From this it would seem that the three worlds are defined as:
- First World: Any country that has a capitalist system of government, and was not viewed by the UN as underdeveloped.
- Second World: Any country that has a communist system of government, and was not viewed by the UN as underdeveloped.
- Third World: Underdeveloped countries.
In particular, I strongly suspect that Sauvy would have viewed Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, and Austria as "First World" countries, even though they were not part of NATO. I also suspect that he might have viewed China as "Third World", even though it had a communist regime, since it was not at all industrially developed in 1952.
Upvote:1
Those are very vague terms.
The original Three World Model appears to have come from a demographer in the 1950's. In his mind, it was essentially 1 - NATO, 2 - Soviet Block, 3 - Everyone else.
The end of the Cold War removed almost the entire "Second World" from existence. So today I believe most people instead use the terms to separate developed nations from less developed nations. But there's no "authority" anywhere that could give you an official ruling on the membership of countries like Turkey or India that could be argued either way.
If you want a full list of who was what when the concept was first coined, that would be the memberships of NATO (and probably other US alliances like ANZAC), the Warsaw Pact countries, with everyone else technically being "third world".
Here's a map showing the first two at their contact point in Europe. To backdate it to the end of WWII, you'd probably want to add Yugoslavia and Austria to the 2nd World. Outside of this map, the 1st World needs the USA and Canada from North America, and Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand from the Pacific area. The 2nd should (arguably) add China and eventually North Korea and Cuba.
More post
- 📝 Is this trebuchet based on a real historical model?
- 📝 Pythagoras: sinfulness of eating beans
- 📝 What happened to Mao Zedong's first wife?
- 📝 Was it possible for a young Japanese woman to end up enslaved in Great Britain in the mid-1600s?
- 📝 Why does US currency have a 25 cent piece and a 20 dollar bill instead of a 20 cent piece or 25 dollar bill?
- 📝 What do we know about the organizational structure of the Library of Alexandria?
- 📝 Were there mercenaries around for WWI?
- 📝 Were New York or Philadelphia ever declared the capital of the United States?
- 📝 Who were the first people to get divorced in Western* Christendom?
- 📝 Who captured Kaifeng from the Jin during the war between Jin and the Sung Mongol alliance?
- 📝 How was 'the right to bear arms' understood in 17th-18th century England?
- 📝 Why did Russians have guns towards the end of the Mongol Yoke, but not the Mongols?
- 📝 Was the introduction of paper money controversial like cryptocurrency?
- 📝 How do we derive information for civilizations from periods before record keeping?
- 📝 Recommended Reading 19th Century US Settler Daily Life?
- 📝 When did the White House get its current address, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
- 📝 How could the Roman sestertii/sesterces be converted into modern terms (say 2017 US$)?
- 📝 Why was Edward I of England the first Edward?
- 📝 Which uniform is this?
- 📝 Did the Trojan Horse actually exist?
- 📝 Is there any historical precedent for two countries being at war and agreeing to allow some commerce to continue?
- 📝 Did the University of California and University of Geneva award honorary degrees to Inazo Nitobe?
- 📝 How do we measure the adequacy of pre-modern monetary supply?
- 📝 History of monogamy
- 📝 What was the response of the general Iranian public to the modernization policies of Reza Shah?
- 📝 Until when did Russia occupy Paris after 1814
- 📝 Why were the 8th Route Army better at fighting the Japanese than the Nationalists were?
- 📝 Did the Soviets lack ball bearings in WWII?
- 📝 How realistic are the number of battle deaths in the Anabasis?
- 📝 When and where did praying with eyes closed originate?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What were all the countries of the First, Second and Third Worlds, when WWII ended?
- 📝 What were the requirements for Iron Cross first and second class?
- 📝 When and where were the first coins made showing the currency or a face value?
- 📝 What happened when the Çatalhöyük burial holes were full and the houses had no more room?
- 📝 What alternate north-south supply routes did the Soviet Union have when the Volga and Stalingrad were under attack?
- 📝 What were conditions like for Chinese men subject to recruitment by the army during the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War?
- 📝 When were both minuscule and majuscule letters used for the first time in the same Latin manuscript?
- 📝 What is the source for the Arabic name of the penguin and when it is first used?
- 📝 When were public tariffs and taxes for water supply introduced for the first time?
- 📝 When was the term "Dravida" first used and what is the context with which it was presented?
- 📝 What incentives were there for Soviet and Chinese politicians to try climb to the top when there was so much history of deposing their own?
- 📝 What is the exact date and year when the first car got invented?
- 📝 What are the three major differences between the first and second silk road?
- 📝 How can we be sure what the first day of the month was 2000 years ago and how can we determine which years were leap years?
- 📝 Were there any Germans in Japan after the surrender of Germany in May, 1945 and if so, what happened to them?
- 📝 In WWII, what were the major differences in tank combat on the eastern and western fronts?
- 📝 Third Reich? What were the other two?
- 📝 What / When was the first use of concentration camps in history?
- 📝 What were the EMP effects, if any, of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
- 📝 What East German laws and regulations were extended to the West after unification?
- 📝 Were there any crops and livestock common to both the Old and New Worlds prior to the Columbian exchange?
- 📝 What were the first local currency systems in history?
- 📝 What were the demographics and economics of South-East Asian islands around year 1400?
- 📝 When did the English and Americans realize that vegetables were healthy?
- 📝 What were the Nazi racial views on Hungarians and the Japanese?
- 📝 What did other European powers say when Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas?
- 📝 What were the “passports” that diplomats requested when declaring war?
- 📝 When were US Presidential candidates' names first shown on the ballot?
- 📝 At what point were the most current and former US Presidents alive?
- 📝 What were the thoughts of the Celts, Romans and other ancient European people about the standing stones which survive from prehistoric times?