2 The Third World, developing countries, the South, emerging markets and rising powers

In the midst of the cold war, the term ‘Third World’ was coined to signify a new geopolitical imagination based on a geography of global politics divided into three camps – the United States and its allies, the Soviet Union and the Communist world and a ‘Third World’ of postcolonial states in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Underpinned by an investment in technology and an ideological faith in free markets and enterprise, this tripartite division ref lected American hegemony in a post-war financial and political international system US administrations helped to construct.