Dr Antony Best

Optional on MA/MSc History of International Relations, MSc Theory and History of International Relations, MSc History of Empires, LSE-PKU Double Degree in International Affairs, MSc LSE-Columbia University Double Degree in International and World History. The course is also available as an outside option where regulations permit.

Efforts to ‘Make Poverty History’ (to invoke a current slogan) have a past which is worth studying to better understand the present-day dilemmas of the existing aid systems. Many humanitarian and development agencies originated in the era following the Second World War. So did some of the fundamental ideas and motivations underpinning them. It was the devastation in war-torn Europe itself which first triggered aid efforts before repeated crises and political/ economic interests in former colonies turned European attention towards other parts of the world. The course examines the entanglement between European domestic and foreign affairs and their relations to the Third World. In a comparative perspective, Germany will be in the focus of attention. Its history exemplifies many of the paradoxical features of humanitarian aid and development.

18 hours of seminars in MT and 20 hours of seminars in LT. Two hours of seminars in the ST.

Three 3,000 word essays to be submitted in MT and LT, and one mock exam in ST.

Berman, Nina, Impossible missions? German economic, military, and humanitarian efforts in Africa, Lincoln 2004; Bessel, Richard / Schumann, Dirk (eds.), Life after death: approaches to a cultural and social history of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s, Cambridge 2003; Easterly, William, The white man’s burden: why the efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good, New York 2006; Havinden, Michael / Meredith, David (eds.), Colonialism and development: Britain and its tropical colonies, 1860-1960, London 1993; Reinisch, Jessica (ed.), Relief in the Aftermath of War, special issue, Journal of Contemporary History 43/3, pp. 371-551; Rist, Gilbert: The history of development: from western origins to global faith, transl. by Patrick Camiller, London 1997, 69-108; Schulz, Brigitte H., Development policy in the Cold War era: the two Germanies and sub-Saharan Africa, 1960-1985, Münster 1995; Staples, Amy L. S., The birth of development: how the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization changed the world, 1945-1965, Kent, Ohio, 2006; West, Odd Arne, The global cold war: third world interventions and the making of our times, Cambridge, 2005.

One three-hour exam in the ST (100%).