Modernization cannot be imported. It has to grow out of our own soil in order to take root. That alone is real transformation.
Indira Gandhi, 1975, Speech on the need for inexpensive medicines, February 14, 1970, in: The Years of Endeavour: Selected Speeches of Indira Gandhi August 1969-August 1972, p. 427 (quoted in Phalkey and Wang, 2016, Planning for science and technology in China and India, in: British Journal for the History of Science, p. 112)
[T]he purpose of aid was to promote the development of the backward countries of the world and that all other considerations must be subordinated to this test.
Barbara Castle (British Minister for Overseas Development, 1964-1965), 1993, Fighting All the Way, p. 344
Latest
China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Strategic Dynamics in the Global South, in: Frontiers in Political Science International Studies (2025): Ge Gao, 2025, The Hualong-1 project in Argentina: a case study on the economic, technological, and geopolitical complexities of the belt and road initiative, in: Frontiers in Political Science International Studies
Mitchell, 2021, Beyond a Fringe: Tales from a reformed Establishment lackey. Mitchell reminisces about flying around in a private jet provided by an English aristocrat, Lord Ashcroft, “to see at first hand the effects of poverty…and to develop policies that could counter these ills.” Mitchell led British international development efforts 2010–2012 and 2022–2024.
2010-2020
Bocking-Welch, 2020, British civic society at the end of empire: Decolonisation, globalisation, and international responsibility
Osborne, 2020, Nominating Judith Hart (Labour Hame)
Ledger, 2019, The Road to Pergau Dam: Aid Policy, Ideology, and the Thatcher Government, in: Diplomacy and Statecraft
Hewitt and Whiteman, 2018, The Commission and development policy, in: EU Development Policy
Clarke, 2018, Science at the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-62
Cumming, 2017, Aid to Africa: French and British Policies from the Cold War to the New Millennium
Riley, 2017, The winds of change are blowing economically’: the Labour Party and
British overseas development, 1940s–1960s, in: Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect?
Muehlenbeck, 2015, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945-1968
Slobodian, 2015, Comrades of Colour: East Germany in the Cold War World
Hanson and Jonsson, 2014, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism
Schwenkel, 2014, Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam
Migani, 2014, The EEC and the Challenge of the ACP States’ Industrialization, in: Industrial Policy in Europe after 1945: Wealth, Power and Economic Development in the Cold War
Migani, 2013, National Strategies and International Issues at the Inception of Community Development Aid: France, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Yaoundé Conventions, in: France, Europe and Development Aid. From the Treaties of Rome to the Present Day
Migani, 2013, La Grande Bretagne, la naissance du groupe ACP et les négociations pour la Convention de Lomé, in: Revue française de civilisation britannique
Ireton, 2013, Britain’s International Development Policies: A History of DFID and Overseas Aid
Campbell, 2013, Race and empire: Eugenics in colonial Kenya
Lankester, 2013, The Politics and Economics of Britain’s Foreign Aid: The Pergau Dam Affair
Isaacman and Isaacman, 2013, Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007
The Politics and Economics of Britain’s Foreign Aid: The Pergau Dam Affair, Institute for Government, 2012 (discussion – posted online here)
Tilley, 2011, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950
Simmons, 2011, WHY FOCUS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN A DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT?
Harding (ed.), 2011, The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader
Migani and Varsori (eds.), 2011, L’Europe sur la scène internationale dans les années 1970
2000-2010
Knoll and Hiery, 2010, Science, in: The German Colonial Experience: Select Documents on German Rule in Africa, China, and the Pacific 1884-1914
Backhouse and Fontaine, 2010, The History of the Social Sciences since 1945
Belich, 2009, Replenishing the earth: the settler revolution and the rise of the Anglo-world, 1783-1939
Clarke, 2007, A Technocratic Imperial State? The Colonial Office and Scientific Research, 1940–1960, in: Twentieth Century British History
Joseph Morgan Hodge, 2007, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism
Clarke, 2006, Experts, Empire and development: fundamental research for the British Colonies, 1940-1960 (Imperial College)
Staples, 2006, The Birth of Development
Seddon, 2005, British and Japanese overseas aid compared, in: Japan’s Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions
Goldman, 2005, Imperial nature: the World Bank and struggles for social justice in the age of globalization
Louk Box, et al., 2004, Review of science and technology plans in ACP countries
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, 2004, The Use of Science in UK International Development Policy, vol. 1 and vol. 2. Bizarre report that argues that science and technology were absent from UK international development policy; in reality this could not be further from the truth; they were always central too it.
Greenidge and Engelhard, 2002, The Need for an ACP-EU Policy Dialogue on Science and Technology for Development in ACP Countries, European Centre for Development Policy Management, Policy Management Brief 15 (“The Commission’s neglect of S&T as an essential ingredient in the economic prosperity of ACP countries is in sharp contrast with the increased interest of ACP governments in the key role that S&T could play in the realization of their development plans…DG Development has ‘mainstreamed’ its RTD policies, and in the process has seemingly lost all interest in supporting the development of RTD capacities and technological innovation systems in ACP countries.”)
Erswell, 2001, UK Aid Policy and Practice 1974-90: An Analysis of the Poverty-Focus, Gender-Consciousness and Environmental Sensitivity of British Official Aid
Anker, 2001, Imperial Ecology: environmental order in the British Empire, 1895-1945
de Greiff, 2001, The International Centre for Theoretical Physics, 1960-1979: Ideology and Practice in a United Nations Institution for Scientific Cooperation and Third World Development
Elmandjra, 2000, Changing Priorities, Constant Values, Journal of Future Studies
1990-2000
White, 1999, Decolonisation: the British experience since 1945
Lister (ed.), 1998, European Union Development Policy
Verschave, 1998, La Françafrique: le plus long scandale de la République
Conkin, 1997, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930
CEC, Green Paper on Relations between the European Union and the ACP Countries on the Eve of the 21st Century. Challenges and Options for a New Partnership (Brussels, 14 November, 1996)
*Wilkinson, 1996, Lobbying for fair trade: Northern NGDOS, the European Community and the GATT Uruguay Round, in: Third World Quarterly. “This study found almost universal agreement that NGDO campaigns around the GATT Uruguay Round had failed to either secure gains for the developing countries.”
Bonneuil and Petitjean, 1996, Les chemins de la création de l’ORSTOM, du Front populaire à la Libération en passant par Vichy, 1936-1945: recherche scientifique et politique coloniale, in: Les sciences hors d’Occident au 20ème siècle: 2. Les sciences coloniales: figures et institutions
Enzo R. Grilli, 1994, The European Community and the Developing Countries
Chalker, 1994, Development and democracy: What should the Commonwealth be doing? in: The Round Table: the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs and Policy Studies
Kent, 1992, The Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France, and Black Africa 1939-1956
Bose and Burnell, 1991, Britain’s Overseas Aid Since 1979: Between Idealism and Self-interest (information on head counts in departments, p. 4)
*Chakravarthi Raghvan, 1990, Recolonisation: Gatt, the Uruguay Round and the Third World
1980-1990
Arnold, 1988, Imperial medicine and indigenous societies
Kipré, 1986, Science, technique et developpement en Afrique Noire, in: Décolonisations et nouvelles dépendances: Modèles et contre-modèles idéologiques et culturels dans le Tiers-Monde
Worboys, 1981, Science and British colonial imperialism, 1895-1940
Headrick, 1981, The tools of empire: technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century
Wilber and Jameson, 1981, Socialist Models of Development
Hogendorn and Scott, 1981, The East African Groundnut Scheme: lessons of a large-scale agricultural failure, in: African Economic History
Before 1980
SID North South Round Table 1978 (Rome, 18-20 May 1978)
Middlemas, 1975, Cabora Bassa: Engineering and Politics in Southern Africa
Development Aid: ‘Fresco’ of Community action tomorrow, COM(74) 1728 (1974). “Part of the third world…has been spared by the latest crises, and even some times served by them; [it] should accept an overall reduction in the financial aid with which it has so far been provided…close cooperation between the economies of the industrialized countries and the countries which have become rich and whose human and sociological conditions are favorable must be mutually profitable…A grand design is [therefore] to combine these countries’ wealth in raw materials, population and area with the technology and the vast markets of the industrialized countries, and possibly with the capital derived from the sale of certain raw materials.”
La Grande-Bretagne, les pays ACP et les négociations pour la Convention de Lomé (1973-1975) (1973). “If one recalls the deep divisions that seemed to lie so close to the surface of ‘African Unity’, it really seems almost incredible that over thirty English and French speaking African countries managed not only to agree on a single spokesman but also to work out together such a clear and well-drafted statement for him to make.”
Drummond, 1972, British economic policy and the empire, 1919-1939
Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Relations with African States and Madagascar (1969)
Müller, 1967, The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China
Williams, 1964, British Aid 4: Technical Assistance, 2nd edition
Williams, 1964, Technical Assistance: a factual survey of Britain’s aid to overseas development through technical assistance. “‘Technical assistance’ refers to the organised transfer, without charge, of knowledge and skills, either through services or through ’embodied knowledge’ in the form of books and training equipment from developed to developing countries. British practice is to regard ‘developing countries’ as all Latin America and the Caribbean; all Africa except the Republic of South Africa; all Asia except Japan and the Asian parts of the Soviet Union; Oceania; Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar and Spain. Technical Assistance is itself a post-war concept although Britain and some other wealthy countries had small technical assistance programmes, without calling them this, even before the war…it seems preferable to confine use of the phrase ‘technical assistance’ to transfers of knowledge and skill which have a deliberate element of gift in them” (p. 13).
Websites
Guia Migani, Maître de conférences en histoire contemporaine
European Community Information Service, undated, Partnership in Africa: the Yaounde Association
Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS)
ECDPM – European Centre for Development Policy Management
Society for International Development
Middle East Supply Centre (MESC)
Mejcher, 2017, Der Nahe Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg
Heydemann, 2000, The rise of the Middle East Supply Centre, in: War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East
Wilmington, 1971, The Middle East Supply Centre
Worthington, 1946, Middle East Science: A Survey of Subjects Other Than Agriculture
European Commission
| Name | Nationality | Tenure |
|---|---|---|
| Helmut Allardt | DE | 1958-? |
| Heinrich Hendus | DE | 1960-1967 |
| Hans Broder Krohn | DE | 1970 |
| Klaus Meyer | DE | 1977-1981 |
| Dieter Frisch | DE | 1982-1989 |
| Steffen Smidt | DE | 1995 |
| Philip Lowe | UK | n.d. |
| Jacobus Richelle | n.d. | n.d. |
| Antonio Cavaco Servinho | n.d. | n.d. |
| Stefano Manservisi | n.d. | n.d. |
| Peter Zangl | n.d. | n.d. |
| Fokion Fotiadis | n.d. | n.d. |
| Fernando Frutuoso de Melo | n.d. | n.d. |
| Monique Pariat | FR | n.d. |
| Philippe Soubestre | n.d. | n.d. |
| Name | Nationality | Political affiliation | Tenure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Nationality | Political affiliation | Tenure |
| Robert Lemaignen* | FR | Right | 1958-1962 |
| Henri Rochereau | FR | Right | 1962-1970 |
| Claude Cheysson | FR | Socialist | 1973-1981 |
| Jean-Francois Deniau* | FR | Center right | n.d. |
| Edgard Pisani | FR | Left | 1981-1985 |
| Lorenzo Natali | IT | Christian Democrat | 1985-1989 |
| Manuel Marin | ES | Socialist | 1989-1999 |
| Poul Nielson | DK | Social Democrat | 1999-2004 |
| Louis Michel | BE | Liberal | 2004-2009 |
| Karel de Gucht | BE | Liberal | 2009-2010 |
| Andris Piebalgs | LV | Liberal-Conservative† | 2010-2014 |
| Neven Mimica | HR | n.d. | 2014-2019 |
| Christos Stylianides | CY | n.d. | 2014-2019 |
| Kristalina Georgieva | BG | Conservative | n.d. |
| Years in force | Agreement | References to scientific cooperation |
|---|---|---|
| n.d. | Development Cooperation Policy (EDP) | Pursued following Treaty of Rome forming the EEC in French colonies, Italian protectorate, Belgium Congo; obviously as a colonial initiative, it was entirely imposed upon the colonies via agreement between the EEC member states. See here. |
| 1964-1969 | Yaoundé I | n.d. |
| 1971 | Arusha | Worth noting because here was an agreement made with former British colonies prior to British accession; not sure if ratified. Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Relations with African States and Madagascar (1969) |
| 1969-1975 | Yaoundé II | Technical cooperation “des investissements dans les domaines de la production et de l’infrastructure économique et sociale, notamment en vue de diversifier la structure économique des États associés et, en particulier, de favoriser leur industrialisation et leur développement agricole” (article 19) |
| 1976 | Lomé I | Facilitate the transfer of technology to the ACP States and to promote the adaptation of such technology to their specific conditions and needs, for example by expanding the capacity of the ACP States for research, for adaptation of technology and for training in industrial skills at all levels in these States (Article 33). Multiple references to here. |
| 1981-1985 | Lomé II | n.d. |
| 1985-1990 | Lomé III | Regional cooperation shall include education and training, research, science and technology, information and communication, the establishment and reinforcement of training and research institutions and technical bodies responsible for technology exchanges as well as co-operation among universities (Article 113) |
| 1989-1999 | Lomé IV | n.d. |
| 2000-2020 | Cotonou | Cooperation shall assist to restore and/or enhance critical public sector capacity and to support institutions needed to underpin a market economy, especially support for improving capacity to analyze, plan, formulate and implement policies, in particular in the economic, social, environmental, research, science and technology and innovation fields (Article 33) |
| 2020- | ? | Still being negotiated. Ought to be seen as an opportunity to introduce a comprehensive, legally-binding cooperation regime in science & research (with a focus on supporting the AU’s scientific autonomy – and *actual* AU priorities not those imagined by donors). But the EU’s current proposals seem rather abstract – see here. |
British Government
| Name | Party | Tenure | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbara Castle | Labour | 1964-1965 | Enacted various bureaucratic reforms. There seem to have been crucial distinctions made between ‘capital’ and ‘technical cooperation’ expenditures in the British accounts in this period. |
| Judith Hart | Labour | 1969-1970, 1974-1975 and 1977-1979 | Recognized expert on the topic prior to becoming a minister, and therefore a major intellectual force. Ironically (perhaps), while Hart was quite a nationalist politician who argued against British membership of the European Community, she also played a significant role in the reform of European aid policy. Seems she might have started to advocate for thinking about actual needs of countries subject to development policies (less condescension, more dialogue). |
| Lynda Chalker | Tory | 1989-1997 | White supremacy was always lurking in Thatcher’s political conceptions. What did aid look like under her (and her successor, Major)? The Pergau Dam scandal is an interesting and well-known story, but I suspect we need to really dig into the wider detail and Chalker presents an enigmatic figure who does not seem to have particularly aligned with Thatcher. |
| Clare Short | Labour | 1997-2003 | Ran the UK’s (at that time) new ‘development’ super-ministry, DFID, in Blair’s Labour government. |
| Establishment | Operating period | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Tropical Products Institute (TPI)* | n.d. | n.d. |
| Land Resources Development Centre (LRDC)* | n.d. | n.d. |
| Centre for Overseas Pest Research (COPR)* | n.d. | Renaming of ALRC |
| Tropical Development and Research Institute (TDRI)* | 1980s | Merger of COPR and TPI |
| Anti-Locust Research Centre (ALRC)* | n.d. | n.d. |
| Overseas Development Natural Resources Institute (ODNRI), Chatham* | n.d. | Merger of TDRI and LRDC |
| Natural Resources Institute (NRI), Chatham* | n.d.-1996 | Transfer of ODNRI to University of Greenwich (ceases to be government establishment) |
| Tropical Stored Products Centre, Slough* | n.d. | n.d. |
| MRC Laboratories The Gambia | 1948-present | 5 sites (4 in The Gambia, 1 in Guinea Bissau). |
| MRC Uganda | 1988-present | MRC/UVRI unit established 1988. Ugandan Virus Research Institute (UVRI). |
| Science and Technology Departments, Ministry of Overseas Development* | 1961-1981 | Various names. Responsibilities for managing scientific and technological research conducted by and on behalf of the overseas development departments. Science, Technology and Medical Department was created in 1968 as a successor to the Science and Technology Department (created n.d.). The department was replaced by a new Science and Technology Department in 1978, when responsibility for medical research passed to the Health and Natural Resources Department (citing: OD11; OD63; C220; C1169; C11396; C15256). |
| Director-General of Economic Planning, Ministry of Overseas Development* | 1964-n.d. | Unit staffed mainly by professional economists. |
| Institute of Development Studies (Sussex); Overseas Development Institute (London); Overseas Development Group (University East Anglia) | 1960s-present | Establishment of knowledge-producing entities outside the direct management of government bureaucracy |
| Middle East Development Division (Beirut)* | 1945-1981 | Evolved from the Middle East Supply Centre (MESC). As far as I can tell, a multidisciplinary team in-country intended to advise London, and to advise the host country, supervise projects, and so forth. |
| Caribbean Development Division (Bridgetown)* | 1972-n.d. | Modeled on the Middle East Development Division. |
| East Africa Development Division (Nairobi)* | 1972-n.d. | Modeled on the Middle East Development Division |
| Southern Africa Development Division (Lilongwe, Blantyre, Harare)* | 1972-n.d. | Modeled on the Middle East Development Division |
| Asia Development Division (Bangkok)* | 1972-n.d. | Modeled on the Middle East Development Division |
Science Think Tank 