ABSTRACT
The history of development as both knowledge and a form of intervention also implies North-South relationships constituted through agency and passivity. The creators of knowledge and those intervening have agency; those receiving knowledge and being ‘developed’ are passive. Chapter 3 traced some of the continuities and discontinuities between the colonial and post-colonial eras, in particular the shift after 1945 towards humanitarian assistance. Of enduring significance to development studies is the fact that the ‘cures’ for the ‘ills’ of recipient countries in need of humanitarian assistance were first forged through the experiences of colonization and imperialism. These forms of humanitarianism, with their roots in nineteenth century imperialism, have been dismissed by many postcolonial critics as little more than a legitimating screen for imperial domination. This is not to deny the fact that there were debates about the nature of humanitarianism during imperialism and many who opposed it
(Gandhi 1998: 27), so any mapping of the idea of development during imperial times needs to acknowledge these differences. What is important is that humanitarianism allowed those peoples who were seen as the object of humanitarian concern to be appropriated into the consciousness of the would-be benefactors. In other words, humanitarians in the North were able to put themselves in positions to speak authoritatively about the sufferings of others in the South, who were deemed incapable of speaking for themselves.
