Gianina Hospedales

Third World countries are over dependent on one or two primary products for example; basically all countries in the Caribbean depend on advanced industrialized countries for electronic products such as TVs and cars or for food products. Some theorists believed that economic growth in the “First world” countries did not necessarily lead to growth and development in the poorer countries. The poorer countries are those in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Asia who have a small income and heavily rely on the export of a single product for foreign exchange revenue. Raul Prebisch states that ‘third world’ countries exported primary products or minerals to the ‘first world’ countries such as oil, bauxite, sugar etc who then manufacture the products because of lack of resources in those countries and then it is sold back to the poorer countries.

        Underdevelopment is an active part of impoverishment as a result of development which means that some parts of the world become underdeveloped because others are developed. Economic growth in ‘first world’ countries created the ‘third world’ poverty. It does not necessarily mean that the third world countries are poor compared to the more developed countries but it is poor because of the industrialization of North America and Europe which impoverished the third world societies because of colonialism and extractive ways of trading. Before modern economic growth the larger countries did not have proper means of connecting to each other for trade because specific networks were not yet created. Through the spread of Capitalism, the ongoing search for profits and monetary gain had begun through the production of goods for example sugar in colonies such as the Caribbean. As a result of the exploitation of raw materials and labour, there was a spread of poverty and a change on the social structures in the Caribbean and a growing dependency on North America and Europe. However, there are theorists who argue that the more advanced countries have relied on the third world through history in order to grow and prosper. Poverty is necessary for the expansion of the first world. According to Eric Williams, it was because of the slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean that started the emergence of a middle class in Britain and it also eventually led to their industrial revolution. Slaves were unpaid and as a result of their labour, they produced large profits for Britain by cultivating sugar or cotton. Another example is Haiti and how it has been exploited for raw materials. Haiti is now the poorest country in the Caribbean but once produced half of all the sugar and coffee consumed in Europe as well as other products such as indigo and cotton which helped to boost quite a large amount of France’s economy. This shows that development comes at a cost and that results in the creation of underdevelopment. For the refining of materials and minerals such as bauxite, tin and iron the developed countries relied on cheap or slave labour which left many of the world’s populations devastated while the advanced countries gained wealth.

The developed countries were never underdeveloped because they always found ways of gaining wealth through their colonies all over the world yet, it resulted in the underdevelopment of those colonies which had long term effects of impoverishment. Dependency theory sees international capitalism as the ruin of the third world.