ABSTRACT
Many texts locate the origins of development in the post-1945 era, alongside the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as global superpowers, anti-colonial movements, and decolonisation in much of the world. Although development as global project and academic discipline may have begun in this period, many scholars now argue that the ideas and practices that underpinned post-war development had their origins earlier, in the late colonial period. From this perspective,
the post-war crusade to end world poverty represented not so much a novel proposal marking the dawn of a new age, as the zenith of decades, if not centuries, of debate over the control and use of the natural and human resources of colonized regions.
