Economic Development: A Seminar History

Economic Development: A Semantic History
Author(s): H. W. Arndt
Source: Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Apr., 1981), pp. 457-466
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1153704
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Economic Development: A Semantic History
H. W. Arndt
Australian National University
So commonplace has the concept of "economic development" become to

this generation that it comes as a surprise to find the Oxford English
Dictionary still unaware of "development" as a technical term in eco-
nomics, as contrasted with its use in mathematics, biology, music, or
photography. Nor, incidentally, is there an entry on "economic develop-
ment" in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The story of how the
term "economic development" entered the English language and came,
for a time at least, to be identified with growth in per capita income is
both curious and illuminating.
Mainstream Economics
Adam Smith spoke, not of economic development, but of "the progress
of England towards opulence and improvement."1 "Material progress"
was the expression almost invariably used by mainstream economists
from Adam Smith until World War II when they referred to what we
would now call the economic development of the West during those 2
centuries.2 When Colin Clark in 1940 published his monumental compara-
tive study of economic development, he still called it The Conditions of
Economic Progress (the title Marshall had had in mind for the fourth
volume of his Principles, which he had planned but never wrote).3
Economists and economic historians wrote about the rise of capi-
talism, the industrial revolution, the evolution of trade, or "The Growth
of Free Industry and Enterprise."4 But this historical process appears
1 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. E. Cannan, 2 vols. (1776; reprint ed.,
London: University Paperbacks, 1961), 1:367.
2 For quotations from J. S. Mill, A. Marshall, K. Wicksell, L. Robbins, A. G. B.
Fisher, and others, see H. W. Arndt, The Rise and Fall of Economic Growth (Melbourne:
Longman Cheshire, 1978), chap. 2.
3 Colin Clark, The Conditions of Economic Progress (London: Macmillan Pub-
lishing Co., 1940); A. C. Pigou, ed., Memorials of Alfred Marshall (London: Macmillan
Publishing Co., 1925), p. vii.
4 A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, 2 vols., 9th ed. (London: Macmillan
Publishing Co., 1961), 1, appendix A:723.
0 1981 by The University of Chicago. 0013-0079/81/2903-0009$01.00
458 Economic Development and Cultural Change
rarely if ever to have been described as economic developmen

policy objective, economic development became increasingly pr
during the nineteenth century, first in Germany and Russia an
countries in Europe, later in Japan and China and elsewhere, in
now call the "Third World." But it was generally referred to as "m
ization" or "westernization" or, not infrequently, "industrial
When Alfred Marshall used the word "development," it was in
sense, denoting merely emergence over time, as in "the develop
speculation in every form"5 or "the development of social institut
This remained generally true, at least in the British and American
ture, until the 1930s.
However, there were a few exceptions. One is J. A. Schum
Theory of Economic Development; but this, though published in G
in 1911 as Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, was not t
into English until 1934.7 A second exception is the use of the te
nomic development" by economic historians in the 1920s. Lilian Kn
reader in economic history at the London School of Economics
published her book, The Economic Development of the British
Empire, and mentioned in the preface that a unit with the same ti
recently been made a compulsory subject for the Bachelor of C
degree of London University.8 A few years later, Vera Anstey, also
London School of Economics, followed Knowles with her The Ec
Development of India.9 Another LSE economic historian, R. H.
in his book on China written in 1931 spoke of the "long proc
development" that had occurred in the West and of the "force
have caused the economic development of China" and referre
analogy between China's twentieth-century economic condition
of Europe in the Middle Ages as implying "a comparison of s
economic development."10
These intriguing exceptions provide the clue to the two quite d
channels through which the term "economic development" en
English usage. Tawney, like Schumpeter, knew his Marx. Lilian
and Vera Anstey were historians of Empire.
Marxist Origins
In one sense, the birthplace of "economic development" in Engli
seem to be the first English translation of Marx's Capital and
s Ibid., p. 752.
6 Ibid.
7 J. A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development, trans. R. Opie, Har-
vard Economic Studies, vol. 46 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934).
8 L. C. A. Knowles, The Economic Development of the British Overseas Empire
(London: George Routledge & Sons, 1924), p. ix.
9 Vera Anstey, The Economic Development of India (London: Longmans, Green,
1929).
1o R. H. Tawney, Land andLabour in China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932), p. 18.
H. W. Arndt 459
1887. The preface t

ment that "it is no
of the social antag
production. It is a
working with iron
is more developed
image of its own
referred to "the h
development of th
development, in th
the word "developm
his economic inter
As Schumpeter p
was.., .the central
the task of showin
its own inherent
whole of society in
As has often been
ment, including
unfold in a dialect
Hegel, in turn, sto
of development as
to Fichte, who was
Some of Hegel's fo
of recent developm
... the existence o
striving to realize
development.... [T
harmless tranquil
development a spe
Marx's notion of
theme in later Marx
literature to mor
Second Congress
important conclu
development is not
11 Karl Marx and Fr

Progress Publishers,
12 Ibid., p. 92.
13 J. A. Schumpeter
Press, 1954), p. 573.
14 For an account of
(London: Gerald Duck
15 G. W. F. Hegel, T
1956), pp. 54-55. In t
accountably translate
tion drawn was between "oppressing" and "oppressed" or

"advanced" and "backward" nations: "In all colonies and backward
countries.., .with the aid of the proletariat of the most advanced co

tries, the backward countries may pass to the Soviet system and, a
passing through a definite stage of development, to communism, witho
passing through the capitalist stage of development."16
Colonial Development
"Economic development" as used by the British historians of Empire
the 1920s is a concept quite different from the Marxist one, with a
siderably longer history. What Lilian Knowles set out to write about
her history of the economic development of the British Overseas Empir
was "the remarkable economic achievements within the Empire dur
the past centuries ... the hacking down of the forest or the sheep rearin
or the gold mining which made Canada, Australia and South Africa i
world factors... or the struggle with the overwhelming forces of nat
which took shape in the unromantic guise of 'Public Works' in Indi
A few years earlier, Lord Milner had warned, in an official memorandum
that "it is more than ever necessary that the economic resources of
Empire should be developed to the utmost,"18 and in 1929 the Briti
Parliament passed a Colonial Development Act.
Whereas for Marx and Schumpeter, economic development was
historical process that happened without being consciously willed
anyone, economic development for Milner and others concerned w
colonial policy was an activity, especially though not exclusively, o
government. In Marx's sense, it is a society or an economic system t
"develops"; in Milner's sense, it is natural resources that are "develop
Economic development in Marx's sense derives from the intransitive ver
in Milner's sense from the transitive verb.19
16 Quoted in Helkne Carrere d'Encausse and S. R. Schram, Marxism and As

(London: Penguin Press, 1969), p. 159. The original text was presumably in Russ
but there is no reason to doubt that these words were accurately translated.
17 Knowles, p. vii.
18 Quoted in F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edi
burgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1921), p. 489.
19 "Economic development" in the intransitive sense had another potent
source besides the line of thought that led from Hegel to Marx and Schumpeter, bu
contribution was virtually stillborn and deserves only a footnote: This was the biolo
theory of evolution. Some years before Darwin's Origin of Species, Herbert Spen
had begun to give the concept of biological evolution a social application (see esp
"Progress: Its Law and Course" and "The Social Organism," reprinted in H. Spenc
Essays, Scientific, Political and Speculative, 3 vols. [London: Williams & Norg
1891], vol. 1.) He argued that social progress was more than "simple growth"; rathe
like the evolution of a biological organism, it was an "evolution of the simple into
complex." At one point he mentioned that "it has not been by command of any ru
that some men have become manufacturers, while others have remained cultivator
it has arisen under the pressure of human wants" (Spencer, pp. 8, 10, 266). However
did not pursue the idea any further. The only economist to take it up appears to h
H. W. Arndt 461
The origins of the

by the 1920s, was i
of colonial history
British (or Americ
in Australian (and
long way back. Th
held large tracts o
thirteenth annual
needs of the you
develop the Comp
point a few years
Wales: "The resour
additions to its po
put in similar ter
developing the vast
Mayes in Melbour
factures More Imm
Resources of the C
edition might well
mic development.
In Canada, too, as
"Canada is now th
prosper, these res
the transitive use
the middle of the
been the Australian,

1863) received honor
Industrial Evolution
of both an individual
an increase of bulk, a
case for balanced grow
isms, growth and dev
ought always to pro
inconsistency, introd
to interfere with th
industries or restrai
of that country and s
384, 393, 437). But He
of the later Social Darwinists in the United States and elsewhere who were more inter-
ested in the survival of the fittest.
20 Quoted in S. H. Roberts, History of Australian Land Settlement (Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1924), p. 68.
21 Quoted in C. D. W. Goodwin, Economic Enquiry in Australia (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1966), p. 423.
22 Quoted in ibid., p. 269.
23 Quoted in ibid., p. 318.
24 Quoted in H. A. Innis and A. R. M. Lower, Select Documents in Canadian
Economic History 1783-1885 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1933), p. 303.
25 Cf., e.g., Goodwin, pp. 311 (1877), 312 (1880), 428 (1888), 305 (1889), 297 (1918).
onyms such as "opening up our natural resources"26 or "the steady

pancy and proper advancement of the Colony,"27-the Canadian
is the only one so far discovered before the 1880s, and in th
States it does not seem to have been used at all in the nineteenth ce
That "economic development" in the transitive sense ente
language and became common in Australia, while being used m
in Canada and not at all in the United States, is no historical ac
In the United States, and for much of the time also in Canada,
development happened, as immigrants from Europe streamed in; s
went west to take up fertile land; communities established t
cities; private companies constructed railways; and mining, logging
facturing, banking, and other enterprises grew, within (and so
without) legal rules made by government. In Australia's hostile
ment, where settlers from the earliest convict days had to conten
drought, flood, pests, distance, and more drought, economic devel
did not happen. It was always seen to need government initiati
to "develop" the continent's resources by bringing people an
from overseas, by constructing railways, and by making set
possible through irrigation and other "developmental" public
So well established did this notion become in Australia that by
it was referred to as "the doctrine of development before settlem
Development and Welfare

Development of natural resources was not always viewed as a
government. The British authority on colonial policy, J. S. F
referred to "the development of the material resources of Burma
trade and economic enterprise,"31 and it was probably also in t
that the term was used in an International Labour Office study of
which identified "continuous occupation and development of the c
in space as in time," as "the primary condition for the economic e
26 E.g., ibid., pp. 282, 318.

27 Latrobe, lieutenant-governor of Victoria (1851), quoted in Roberts
The fact that these synonyms began to be displaced by "development" in the
1840s may be explained by the vogue which ideas of evolution and developm
enjoying about that time in natural sciences, such as biology and geology; t
English Dictionary cites uses in more general literature in the same period, e
Martineau (1834), Dickens (1837), Emerson (1841), and Newman (1845).
28 Thus the word "development" does not occur once in two works abou
of nineteenth-century economic history in the United States, railway policy
lands policy, the Australian counterparts of which use it constantly (see S.
Inland Transportation [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1933]; and B. H.
A History of Public Land Policies [New York: Peter Smith, 1939]).
29See F. W. Eggleston, "Australian Loan and Developmental Policy," An
Economic Survey of Australia, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 158 (November 1931): 193-201.
30 Ibid., p. 197.
31 J. S. Furnivall, An Introduction to the Political Economy of Burma, 3d ed.
(1931; reprint ed., Rangoon: People's Literature Committee and House, 1957), p. i.
H. W. Arndt 463
tion of its resource

enterprise, "develo
distinct from the
to as the "progres
itself, connote a ri
not of people. The
preface to the firs
described its pur
progress of these
plished in the deve
the social well-bein
How little econom
quite recently is m
British colonial th
the features of im
emergence of notio
Colonial governme
development and
expressed it, the n
conqueror would b
cally, but also one
the native's.., .me
this spirit that the
Development Act
Hancock comment
will probably be th
... In the nineteen
profit." The new
and social content
the need for minim
Toward the Postw

All through the in
it was used at all
development or exp
32 F. Mauretta, Some
of Brazil, Studies an
1937), p. 9.
33 See, e.g., Goodwin, pp. 86, 118, 124, 287.
34 T. A. Coghlan, A Statistical Account of the Seven Colonies of Australasia
(Sydney, 1890), p. v. (italics added).
35 Lugard (n. 18 above).
36 R. E. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 120.
37 W. K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, vol. 2, Problems of
Economic Policy 1918-1939, 2 pts. (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), pt. 2,
p. 267.
An interesting exception, though one that may prove the r

Chinese nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen. In 1922, he published (i
a remarkable book on The International Development of Chi
he proposed a massive program for the economic developme
with the aid of foreign capital. In breadth of imagination, it a
a generation much of the post-1945 literature on economic d
"China must not only regulate private capital, but she must
state capital and promote industry.., .build means of produ
roads and waterways, on a large scale. Open new mines..,
foster manufacturing."38 The reason for questioning whether
should be regarded as an exception is partly that his thinking
influenced by the October Revolution in Russia and thus indire
Marxist tradition39 and partly that his use of "economic devel
after all, closer to that of Milner than of Marx: "The natural r
China are great and their proper development could create a
market for the whole world."40
Another exception, outside the mainstream of economic writing in
the English language, was the use of "economic development" in Australia
(and probably the other Dominions) where the distinction between the
transitive and intransitive meanings became blurred to the point of
obliteration. When, in 1931, D. B. Copland edited a special issue on
Australia for The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, he referred to it as "a survey of recent trends in Australian
economic development," and he wrote in the last chapter that "by the
end of 1929 Australia had reached the close of a period of rapid develop-
ment and high prosperity" and that the growth of Australian manufac-
turing production during the years 1913-26 had represented "a natural
development in a country that had first pursued primary production,"
though "somewhat forced."41 In such passages, neither he nor his readers,
one suspects, were any longer conscious of the transitive, as contrasted
with the intransitive, meaning; during the 1930s, "economic development"
was constantly used in Australia, and increasingly elsewhere, in this
ambivalent sense.
In 1939, Eugene Staley, starting where Sun Yat-sen had left off,
38 Sun Yat-sen, The International Development of China (New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons, 1922), p. 8.
39 Sun Yat-sen had expounded his grandiose ideas for railway development in
China before World War I, and although the book was not published until 1922, 2
years after a visit to the Soviet Union, it was based on lectures he gave in 1918. But even
at that time, what was happening in Russia made as great an impression on him as
news of the Great Leap Forward in China was to make on Indian opinion 40 years later.
40 Sun Yat-sen, p. 5.
41 D. B. Copland, "The National Income and Economic Prosperity," An Eco-
nomic Survey of Australia, in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science 158 (November 1931): v, 260.
H. W. Arndt 465
proposed a "world
idea was taken up
world.43 Another f
was probably the f
postwar sense,44 a
"The International
In the immediate
virtually synonym
veloped countries. A
of rapid economic
income between ric
documents on deve
ultimate aim in eco
the entire populat
appeared in 1955 un
Rostow's hands M
Stages of Economi
established usage wh
development as a ri
A few years earli
trend. Protesting
head" into the defin
the earlier distinc
"backward" peoples
terms different con
resources, and the l
fundamentally beca
42 Eugene Staley, W
Relations, 1939), p. 68
43 See H. W. Arndt,
Planning: Essays in H
(London: Allen & Unw
44 W. Benson, "The
Economic Basis of Pea
45 P. N. Rosenstein-
Backward Areas," Inte
46 W. A. Lewis, "An
156.
47 United Nations, E
grammes and Agencie
48 W. A. Lewis, The
1955); W. W. Rostow,
versity Press, 1960).
49 Gunnar Myrdal,
Gerald Duckworth &
50 Hla Myint, "An In
Papers, n.s. 6 (June 1
51 Ibid., p. 132 (italic
of natural resources does not necessarily reduce the backw

people.52 But it was too late. Before long, standard textbo
economic development as "a sustained, secular improvemen
well-being, ... reflected in an increasing flow of goods and s
even announced right at the start that "the terms 'economic d
and 'economic growth' will be used to refer to a sustained incr
capita income."54
What many development economists have tried to do in
years is to get away from this identification of "economic d
with "economic growth." One form this endeavor has taken is
into "development" some of the Hegelian connotations that
on the way.
52 Ibid., p. 134.
53 B. Okun and R. W. Richardson, eds., Studies in Economic Devel
York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961), p. 230.
54 D. A. Baldwin, Economic Development and American Foreign Po
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 1.

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Economic Development: A Semantic History

So commonplace has the concept of "economic development" become to

rarely if ever to have been described as economic developmen

1887. The preface t

11 Karl Marx and Fr

tion drawn was between "oppressing" and "oppressed" or

countries.., .with the aid of the proletariat of the most advanced co

16 Quoted in Helkne Carrere d'Encausse and S. R. Schram, Marxism and As

The origins of the

been the Australian,

onyms such as "opening up our natural resources"26 or "the steady

Development and Welfare

26 E.g., ibid., pp. 282, 318.

tion of its resource

Toward the Postw

An interesting exception, though one that may prove the r

38 Sun Yat-sen, The International Development of China (New York: G. P.

of natural resources does not necessarily reduce the backw

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