ABSTRACT

After the Second World War, Europe embarked on a massive programme of reconstruction, instrumental to which was the Marshall Plan, launched by the US Government on 5 June 1947. While the Marshall Plan was heralded as US financial help to the devastated economies and infrastructures of Western Europe, this ‘goodwill gesture’ was also designed to stimulate markets for America’s burgeoning manufacturing sector. The Marshall Plan, which injected US$17 billion mainly into the UK, France, West Germany and Italy between 1948 and 1952, generated much confidence in the role of overseas economic aid (Hunt 1989; Rapley 1996). Another landmark in the recognition of the need for richer countries to play an active role in the development of poorer countries came less than two years later, on 20 January 1949, when US President Truman, in ‘Point Four’ of his Inaugural Address, proclaimed:

we must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate. They are victims of disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people... I believe that we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1964: 114-15).