Abstract
From the World Bank to the United Nations, from Buenos Aires to Calcutta to Salisbury, the decade or so after 1945 was marked by an extraordinary optimism about the state of the world. Well aware of the world’s vast problems in the post-war years (poverty, malnutrition, and minimal opportunities for large swaths of the world’s population, primarily in the colonies of European powers), scholars, philanthropic officers, diplomats, and political leaders around the world nevertheless hoped – even expected – to solve these problems within a couple of generations. They were led by their hopes more than any firm ideas about the nature and extent of the problems. This was a result, on the one hand, of the optimistic zeitgeist of the time, and, on the other, of the paucity of detailed knowledge of the colonial areas. The knowledge of colonial officials ran deep, but focused on specific areas and on practical problems. Western social sciences took as their near-exclusive subject the industrial economies of the North Atlantic. While American foundations and missionaries had long been active in what would come to be called the ‘Third World’, they focused on small-scale and ameliorative missions.