The term third world was invented by the economist and demographer French Alfred Sauvy in 1952, in reference to the Tiers state (of the Abbé Sieyès) French under the Ancien Mode, in order to indicate the worldwide of the sphere which did not belong nor to the Western block (North America, Israel, Western Europe, Australia…), nor with the communist bloc (the USSR, China, Eastern Europe…).

“because finally, this ignored third world, exploited, scorned like the third state, also wants him, being something”

(article Three worlds, a planet , the Observer , August 14th 1952)

The concept was criticized as being Capitaliste in the USSR, and as being a middle-class invention by Régis Debray.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the term seems to fall in disuse, because on the one hand, there does not exist any more second world (the Soviet world) and on the other hand, the vision néolibérale does not see a third world, since everyone would be, according to them, been subject to the same rules.

Sauvy, author of the expression, repudiate it in 1989 in an article of the Monde : “That one allows the creator of the expression third world, it there has already nearly forty years, to repudiate it, so much it makes forget the increasing diversity of the cases. To include in the same term the countries of Black Africa and " Four dragons " cannot carry out well far. ”

The term remains sometimes used like a simplification of language to indicate the whole of the Developing country . The majority are African S, Asian and South American.

See too

• economic Quarter-world
• Typology of the countries
• Debt of the third world
• Committee for the cancellation of the debt of the third world (CADTM)
• Developing country
• Non-aligned countries

Simple: Third World