KHID 2605 - Prosperity as Global Project: The History of Intrnational Development in the Twentieth Century

It is hard to imagine the contemporary world without international development. Over the last half-century, a dizzying array of NGOs and international agencies have sprouted up in a worldwide effort to boost economic growth and living standards in the global South, where development projects offer officials and entrepreneurs some of the most important and potentially lucrative opportunities available. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, the language of development shapes the ideas and expectations of billions of people. In short, few aspects of the contemporary world are untouched by ‘development'. This course will explore the history of overseas development as an idea, as a programme, and as a globally shared set of practices from the nineteenth century to the present. We will examine this history through a series of key themes ranging from colonial ‘civilizing missions' to the strategic use of development aid in the Cold War to the growing criticism of development policies in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Throughout the seminar, we will see how development efforts deliberately sought—successfully and unsuccessfully—to ‘improve' lands and peoples through technology and social engineering, yet in the process created new forms of North-South inequality that shape the world today. The course is designed to introduce students not only to the historiography on development per se, but also to the wider fields of international and global history.

Corey ROSS

Séminaire

English

Week 1. Introduction to the subject and the seminar - For this opening session I will offer a brief overview of some of the main issues that we will be discussing over the course of the semester, followed by a short general discussion with the class. We will then go through the practicalities of the course, including the presentations that each student will be expected to do. Week 2. Development as History Required Reading: - Frederick Cooper, ‘Writing the History of Development', Journal of Modern European History vol. 8 (2010), pp. 5-23. Suggested Reading: - Nick Cullather, ‘Development? It's History', Diplomatic History vol. 24 (2000), pp. 641-53. - David Engerman and Corinna Unger (eds.), ‘Special Forum: Modernization as a global project', Diplomatic History vol. 33 (2009), pp. 375-506. Week 3. Colonial ‘Civilizing Missions' Required Reading: - Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance 2nd ed. (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 2014), pp. 199-236 (part of chapter 4: ‘Attributes of the Dominant: Scientific and Technological Foundations of the Civilizing Mission') Suggested Reading: - Michael Adas, ‘Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology', Journal of World History vol. 15, no. 1 (Mar. 2004), pp. 31-63. - Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Week 4. Inter-war Crisis and International Development Required Reading: - Sunil Amrith, Patricia Clavin, ‘Feeding the World: Connecting Europe and Asia, 1930-1945, Past & Present, vol. 213. supplement 8 (2013), pp. 29-50. Suggested Reading: - Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), introduction. - Joseph Morgan Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2007). Week 5. From Colonial Development to International Development Required Reading: - Frederick Cooper, ‘Development, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization: The Examples of British and French Africa', Revue d'Histoire des Sciences Humaines, vol. 10 (2004), pp. 9–38. Suggested Reading: - Michele Alacevich, ‘The World Bank and the politics of productivity: the debate on economic growth, poverty, and living standards in the 1950s', Journal of Global History vol. 6 (2011), pp. 53–74. - Frederic Cooper, ‘Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development Concept', in Cooper and Packard (eds.) International Development and the Social Sciences, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 64–92. Week 6. Development and Cold War *24-hour take-home exam one to commence after the end of the seminar Required Reading: - Sara Lorenzini, Global Development: A Cold War History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), pp. 1-8, 169-178. Suggested Reading: - David C. Engerman, ‘Learning from the East: Soviet Experts and India in the Era of Competitive Coexistence', Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East vol. 33, no. 2 (2013), pp. 227–38. - David C. Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). - Bradley R. Simpson, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008). Week 7. Food, Agriculture, and ‘Green Revolution' Required Reading: - Nick Cullather, ‘Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology', Diplomatic History vol. 28 (2004), pp. 227-254. Suggested Reading: - Benjamin Siegel, ‘“Fantastic Quantities of Food Grains”: Cold War Visions and Agrarian Fantasies in Independent India', in: Leslie James, Elisabeth Leake (eds), Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 21–42. - Nicole Sackley, ‘The village as Cold War site: experts, development, and the history of rural reconstruction', Journal of Global History (2011) 6, pp. 481–504. - Nick Cullather, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Week 8. Development as Environmental Control Required Reading: - Thomas Robertson, ‘New Frontiers: World War II Technologies and the Opening of Tropical Environments to Development', in: Stephen Macekura, Erez Manela (eds), The Development Century: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 107-29. Suggested Reading: - Thomas B. Robertson, ‘DDT and the Cold War Jungle: American Environmental and Social Engineering in the Rapti Valley of Nepal', Journal of American History vol. 104 (2018), pp. 904-930. - Allen F. Isaacman, Isaacman, Barbara S. Isaacman, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique (Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2013). Week 9. Demography and Development Required Reading: - Matthew Connelly, ‘Seeing beyond the State: The Population Control Movement and the Problem of Sovereignty', Past & Present no. 193 (2006), 197-233. Suggested Reading: - Samantha Iyer, ‘Colonial Population and the Idea of Development', Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 55, no. 1 (2013), pp. 65–91. - Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2008). Week 10. Rethinking Development Required Reading: - Daniel J. Whelan, “‘Under the Aegis of Man': The Right to Development and the Origins of the New International Economic Order,” Humanity vol 6, no.1 (2015), pp. 93–108. Suggested Reading: - Corinna Unger, International Development: A Postwar History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), chapter 8: ‘The Disintegration of Development' - Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). - Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London, 1972). Week 11. Development and its Critics Required Reading: - Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2012), chapter 2: ‘The Problematization of Poverty' (the original 1995 edition of this book is also suitable) Suggested Reading: - William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). - James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development', Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994). - Abigail Hall-Blanco, ‘Why Development Programmes Fail: William Easterly and the Political Economy of Intervention', Economic Affairs vol. 36 (2016), pp. 175-83. Week 12. Can History Improve Development Policy? *24-hour take-home exam two to commence after the end of the seminar In this session we will discuss the ways in which (and extent to which) a historical perspective on development might inform development practices today. Please come prepared with thoughts and questions. Required Reading: Michael Woolcock et al., ‘How and Why Does History Matter for Development Policy?', Journal of Development Studies vol. 47 (2009), 70-96.

Spring 2020-2021

1. Each student will orally introduce one of the weekly topics (presentation of c. 10-15 minutes) and help lead the discussion, based on a close reading of the set text. The quality of the presentation and leadership is worth 20%. 2. The remaining 80% will be based on two short 24-hour take-home essays (800-1000 words), each worth 40%, at the end of the week 6 and week 12 sessions. For these take-home essays I will send an email to the group with the questions; students can choose one of the questions and have 24 hours to send me their essay (these written assignments are acceptable in English or French).

The course will be held mostly or entirely online, 24 hours in total over 12 weeks. Apart from weeks 1 and 12, each week will consist of: - a brief (c. 20-minute) pre-recorded lecture offering an overview of the subject (these will be made available in advance online); - a weekly Zoom meeting (c. 90 minutes) where we will discuss the lecture and the reading, and where students will make their presentations (see evaluation below). Students are expected to be prepared to discuss the weekly readings in the form of questions, comments and critiques. This means attending to various aspects of the readings: examining how the author constructs his/her argument, analysing how it relates to wider historical debates, and identifying how it bases it arguments on the evidence.