Development

Etymology: Old French desveloper → French développement → English development

The Old French desveloper meant to unwrap or unfold, the opposite of enveloper.¹ By the eighteenth century, the metaphor had expanded to describe the gradual unfolding of potential, whether in a person, an argument, or a nation.

The economic meaning crystallized on January 20, 1949, when U.S. President Harry Truman used his inaugural address to announce Point Four, a program of technical assistance for what he called underdeveloped areas.² In a single speech, Truman divided the world into categories that would organize international policy for decades.

The historian Arturo Escobar argued in Encountering Development (1995) that Truman's framing turned two-thirds of the world's population into objects of improvement, measured against a standard defined by industrialized Western nations.³

1949, The year Truman's inaugural address divided the world into developed and underdeveloped nations.

The United Nations adopted the vocabulary immediately. Development agencies, development banks, and development goals followed. The word that once meant the unfolding of something already present became a prescription for what was absent.⁴

The economist Amartya Sen reframed development in 1999 as the expansion of human capabilities and freedoms, rather than the growth of GDP. His approach shifted the question from how much a country produces to what its citizens are able to do and to be.⁵

Timeline

• 1750s, Développement entered French to describe the gradual unfolding of potential.
• 1949, Truman divided the world into developed and underdeveloped areas in his inaugural address.
• 1995, Escobar's Encountering Development challenged the framing of non-Western nations as objects of improvement.
• 1999, Sen redefined development as the expansion of human capabilities and freedoms.

Endnotes

1. Harper, Douglas, "Etymology of development," Online Etymology Dictionary.
2. Harry S. Truman, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949.
3. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
4. Wolfgang Sachs, ed., The Development Dictionary (London: Zed Books, 1992).
5. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999).