ABSTRACT
In the years that immediately followed the Second World War, it became fashionable among economists to discuss economic development and to distinguish between developed and underdeveloped societies. An under-developed society is normally defined as a society in which the economy is characterized by the underemployment of human and material resources; low real income per capita in comparison with that of the United States, Canada, and western Europe; and the prevalence of malnutrition, illiteracy, and disease. This definition makes development synonymous with industrialization and underdevelopment with preindustrial society. On this reckoning, every society anywhere in the world prior to 1750 was underdeveloped: not only the Tuaregs in Africa but also the Florentines at the time of the Medicis. Once the shortcomings of a definition have been acknowledged, its usefulness depends on the amount of assistance it can provide in one’s inquiries. Clearly, the notion that the whole world was underdeveloped until 1750 is not useful. The term underdeveloped has however acquired a certain resonance and it is worth preserving, not as shorthand for “per capita incomes lower than in the United States” but redefined, albeit vaguely, as “performance” levels lower than in the advanced societies of the period in question.
