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In Search of The Global South (Draft)
Under the headline “Modern Solomon Needed to Solve China Problem” on January 18, 1959, The St. Louis Globe-Democrat introduced William R. Frye as “the Christian Science Monitor’s distinguished United Nations correspondent.” (St. Louis G-D, 23) On April 4, 1965, The South Bend Tribune published another article by Frye titled “Global North-South Economic War Is Political Dynamite for the West;”
“Because so many of the rich countries are to be found in the northern hemisphere and so many of the poor ones are in the southern, this struggle has come to be known as the ‘North-South’ battle.” (SB Trib, 16)
By 1972, Frye was simply known as “United Nations Correspondent.”
As online references go, Wikipedia can be rated fair for accuracy
since its contributors can be anybody with an account at the
information website. An article published at Wikipedia under the
heading “Global South” attributes its origin elsewhere, to Carl
Oglesby in 1969. (Wikipedia)
It also suggests the article be merged with yet another page titled
“North-South divide in the World.” Curiously that reference to
merge the two articles was made just this month, in November, 2020. Clearly, Frye’s reference
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to the term as found in archived newspapers predates Oglesby’s by four years. Reference to the combined Frye term vanished in the newspaper archives at least until 1971 when for the Society Editor Frances Russell Kay, it resurfaced in the Van Nuys Valley News in her article titled “Space Age Sage Views” noted;
“Because of the ever growing technological developments it will be goodbye New York and San Francisco. It no longer will be an East-West but a global North-South (over the poles) world where 90 per cent of humanity can reach any other human.” (Kay, 17)
By the late 70s, the term “global north-south” was beginning to emerge as the roots of a new world order when Canada’s Pierre Trudeau met with President Jimmy Carter and used the occasion to;
“Stand in support of global north-south talks aimed at devising a ‘new world economic order’ which would be fairer to developing nations.” (UPI-CP, The Montreal Gazette, 7) By 1978, Ernest B. Furgurson reported for the Baltimore Sun that President Carter had “laid down a U.S. policy of dealing with Latin American problems in a global North-South context,...” (The Sun, A2)
The expression by the late 19th century was beginning to redefine the geography of the planet in terms of prosperity versus poverty. A few months later, the expression finally found some real tread in an article by Hobart Rowen of the Washington Post, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, titled “A challenge to doomsday economics.” Rowen cited author Harrison Brown’s estimate that in 330 years, the planet’s population would outstrip its ability to provide for it, an echo of the famous Malthusian Doctrine boiled down to simple supply and demand, where the usual draconian measures based on population control would forestall that scenario. Rowen then provides the alternative scenario of the Overseas Development Council’s JW Sewell whereby;
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“the Third World, with an enormous untapped potential, could become the new ‘engine’ for future world economic growth.” (Star Tribune, 8)
The article then cites former LBJ adviser Walt W. Rostow who insisted that the private sector wouldn’t necessarily take up the slack and suggested wage-price controls to keep inflation in check. Rostow also rejected the Brown thesis of stagnating Western economy with the Third
World depending too much on the industrial north to keep it from collapse; “Rostow’s analysis turns upside down the Third World belief that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. ‘I have news for you,’ he said, ‘It ain’t so. The poor, in fact, get richer and the rich slow down.”
The article concludes that Sewell observed “the economies of the global North and South ‘are more closely linked now than at any time in the past.’ “
By the turn of the decade, a UN session designed to bring about closer economic alignment between the two emerging geoeconomic regions was, as described in Leonard Downie’s headline for The Age, “World aid bid meets indifference, hostility” that were;
“Scheduled for next month to launch global north-south negotiations on trade, energy, food, financial aid and the international monetary fund,” (The Age, 9)
Downie noted the diplomats couldn’t “even agree on the agenda.” The dawn of that new decade ushered in what would become the battle cry for politicians in much the same way the climate crisis is the call to arms of the early decades of the 21st century. A reader commentary in the Longview, Washington Daily News cited a report co-authored by Chancellor Willy Brandt of Germany and Katherine Graham of the Washington Post, noted “North-South, A Program for Survival,” promised “population explosion, hunger, disease, and military expansion.” (Working, 10)
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Strangely enough, it was the far north Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who in 1981 called for a “revolution in international morality” that would set the stage for what would be the eventual transfer of the modern world to the third world. (Montreal Gazette, 1981)
Bullet points of the ambitious plan
included inflation proof Third World
exports, tech transfer, foreign aid, and
removal of politically “tied aid” to
underdeveloped nations. Theoretically,
the age of poverty was at an end for
the Third World, at least by the
standards of the early 80s. In fact, the
term Third World itself was about to be replaced by the revisionist perspective of “Global South.”
President Reagan’s Cancun summit in late 1981 became a forum on the North-South divide but for unexpected reasons, related to ideology and not economics. The North was to blame for poverty in the South;
“In virtually all Third World statements on economic problems, the assumption is pervasive that the causes of Third World poverty are external to the countries themselves--the causes are former colonialism, multi-nationals, neo-imperialism and an ‘unjust’ international economic order.” (Jeffrey Hart, The Indianapolis Star, 12)
The rift that had temporarily closed had now widened from its new geoeconomic map to what Hart called “egalitarian.”
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When the North was factored out of the equation and where the Third World disappeared from the geoeconomic map altogether isn’t very clear. This historiographic inquiry ended around the turn of the last century but the parameters and the theme remain; of poverty, blame fixing, disagreement and derisive rhetoric. The search for the true magnetic Global South is still on. Its discovery, by Harrison Brown’s estimate, will be just around the corner in 330 years.
References
Frye, W.R., “Global North-South Economic War Is Political Dynamite for the West,” South Bend Tribune, April 4, 1965,
Global South etymology,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_South#:~:text=The%20Global%20South%20is%20an,coun tries%20of%20the%20Global%20North.
Kay, F.R., “Space Age Sage Views,” Van Nuys Valley News, February 16, 1971, Page 17. Trudeau, “PM to back Carter on arms control,” Montreal Gazette, February 16, 1977, Page 7 Furgurson, E. B., “Carter trip offers respite from domestic woes,” The Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1978, Page A2.
Rowen, H., “A challenge to doomsday economics,” The Minneapolis Star, May 30, 1978, Page 8.
Downie, L., “World aid bid meets indifference, hostility,” The Age, July 22, 1980, Page 9. Working, R., “ ‘Doom’s’ new meaning,” Longview Daily News, August 11, 1981, Page 10. (CP), “North-South Talks a step closer,” The Gazette, July 22, 1981, Page 13. Hart, J., “Cancun performance,” Indianapolis Star, October 31, 1981, Page 12. Malthusian Doctrine, https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/malthusian-theory/
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In Search of The Global South (Revision)
Defined in the Associated Press Stylebook, 55th Edition for 2020-2022, it is recommended
for use of the term “Third World;” “Avoid use of this term. Developing nations is more appropriate when referring to economically developing nations of Africa, Asia and Latin America.” (AP, 295) Credit for dividing the planet into three distinct geoeconomic regions went to Alfred Sauvy in 1952. (history.com) The term went from vague to vogue also around that time; “Meanwhile, our Latin American neighbors, hitherto a source of diplomatic support in the United Nations, are forming new alliances: They are joining a third-world group--the Asian-Arab peoples--which may soon become the balance of power between the Yankee colossus and the Russian bear.” (Telegraph-Forum, 6)
In the Women’s Section of the Winona Daily News in 1968, the “third world group” was referred to the “Group of 77.” (Daily News, 21) That same year emerged the Third World Liberation Front. What’s missing is where Mssr. Sauvy arrived at the idea of a third world. The New York Daily News published an article from la Patrie of Paris, in 1853; “Today California is not only one of the most important states of the American Union, it is besides, for the far seeing observer, a third world engrafted on the still young tree of the world discovered by Columbus...From California will shine, over these myriads of islands, some of which are continents, sown in the great Pacific Ocean, a resplendent light, and a marvelous
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power which will call these people, black, yellow or copper, to civilized and social life.” (Daily News, 8)
There is a sense of class division emerging in the above excerpt that relates directly to the concept of a third world, in a reference to people of color, where white is excluded. Certainly, Sauvy must have had a kernel thought about how and where to draw the line; along economic or ethnic lines that would eventually evolve into the three-world model as his product. Two years later, the Bristol Mercury reported a meeting of the Young Men’s Christian Organization where one of the speakers divided reality into seven worlds, in which the third was the political world, behind social and business. (Mercury, Page 6) This, and other archived stories, indicate a multitude of worlds from which Sauvy could choose from before deciding that three were sufficient.
Under the headline “Modern Solomon Needed to Solve China Problem” on January 18, 1959, The St. Louis Globe-Democrat introduced William R. Frye as “the Christian Science Monitor’s distinguished United Nations correspondent.” (St. Louis G-D, 23) On April 4, 1965, The South Bend Tribune published another article by Frye titled “Global North-South Economic War Is Political Dynamite for the West;”
“Because so many of the rich countries are to be found in the northern hemisphere and so many of the poor ones are in the southern, this struggle has come to be known as the ‘North-South’ battle.” (SB Trib, 16)
By 1972, Frye was simply known as “United Nations Correspondent.”
By the late 70s, the term “global north-south” was beginning to emerge as the roots of a new world order when Canada’s Pierre Trudeau met with President Jimmy Carter and used the occasion to;
18
“Stand in support of global north-south talks aimed at devising a ‘new world economic order’ which would be fairer to developing nations.” (UPI-CP, The Montreal Gazette, 7) By 1978, Ernest B. Furgurson reported for the Baltimore Sun that President Carter had “laid down a U.S. policy of dealing with Latin American problems in a global North-South context,...” (The Sun, A2)
The expression by the late 19th century was beginning to redefine the geography of the planet in terms of prosperity versus poverty. A few months later, the expression finally found some real tread in an article by Hobart Rowen of the Washington Post, published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, titled “A challenge to doomsday economics.” Rowen cited author Harrison Brown’s estimate that in 330 years, the planet’s population would outstrip its ability to provide for it, an echo of the famous Malthusian Doctrine boiled down to simple supply and demand, where the usual draconian measures based on population control would forestall that scenario. Rowen then provides the alternative scenario of the Overseas Development Council’s JW Sewell whereby; “the Third World, with an enormous untapped potential, could become the new ‘engine’ for future world economic growth.” (Star Tribune, 8)
The article then cites former LBJ adviser Walt W. Rostow who insisted that the private sector wouldn’t necessarily take up the slack and suggested wage-price controls to keep inflation in check. Rostow also rejected the Brown thesis of stagnating Western economy with the Third
World depending too much on the industrial north to keep it from collapse; “Rostow’s analysis turns upside down the Third World belief that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. ‘I have news for you,’ he said, ‘It ain’t so. The poor, in fact, get richer and the rich slow down.”
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The article concludes that Sewell observed “the economies of the global North and South ‘are more closely linked now than at any time in the past.’ “
President Reagan’s Cancun summit in late 1981 became a forum on the North-South divide but for unexpected reasons, related to ideology and not economics. The North was to blame for poverty in the South;
“In virtually all Third World statements on economic problems, the assumption is pervasive that the causes of Third World poverty are external to the countries themselves--the causes are former colonialism, multi-nationals, neo-imperialism and an ‘unjust’ international economic order.” (Jeffrey Hart, The Indianapolis Star, 12)
The rift that had temporarily closed had now widened from its new geoeconomic map to what Hart called “egalitarian.”
When the North was factored out of the equation and where the Third World disappeared from the geoeconomic map altogether isn’t very clear. This historiographic inquiry ended around the turn of the last century but the parameters and the theme remain; of poverty, blame fixing, disagreement and derisive rhetoric.
Today, reference to anything other than “One World” has become, in a word, verboten. The new method is to define stratification in terms of “global.” Eventually that will evolve from its revisionist position to become outmoded and out of favor. Someone will come along and make yet another effort to discover the history behind how the world evolved into global to whatever else it will be called. Until then, maybe the North-South divide will finally close the gap, but
otherwise,
“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” (Kipling) References
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Frye, W.R., “Global North-South Economic War Is Political Dynamite for the West,” South Bend Tribune, April 4, 1965,
Global South etymology,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_South#:~:text=The%20Global%20South%20is%20an,coun tries%20of%20the%20Global%20North.
Kay, F.R., “Space Age Sage Views,” Van Nuys Valley News, February 16, 1971, Page 17. Trudeau, “PM to back Carter on arms control,” Montreal Gazette, February 16, 1977, Page 7 Furgurson, E. B., “Carter trip offers respite from domestic woes,” The Baltimore Sun, March 27, 1978, Page A2.
Rowen, H., “A challenge to doomsday economics,” The Minneapolis Star, May 30, 1978, Page 8.
Downie, L., “World aid bid meets indifference, hostility,” The Age, July 22, 1980, Page 9. Working, R., “ ‘Doom’s’ new meaning,” Longview Daily News, August 11, 1981, Page 10. (CP), “North-South Talks a step closer,” The Gazette, July 22, 1981, Page 13. Hart, J., “Cancun performance,” Indianapolis Star, October 31, 1981, Page 12. Malthusian Doctrine, https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/malthusian-theory/ The Associated Press Stylebook, 55th Edition, 2020, Basic Books, NY
Sauvy, Why are countries classified as First, Second or Third World? - HISTORY New Foreign policy in offing for U.S., Bucyrus, Ohio Telegraph-Forum, 28 November 1952, Page 6.
Group of 77, Winona Daily News, 31 March 1968, Page 21. NY Daily News, 13 January, 1853, Page 8.
Seven Worlds, Bristol Mercury, 20 January 1855, England The Ballad of East and West, Poems - Poems - The Ballad of East and West (kiplingsociety.co.uk)
Revised: 04 December 2020
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