Depression Development: The Interwar Origins of a Global US Modernization Agenda

Abstract

Modernization was a crucial mechanism for the United States to contend with the problems posted by both the Cold War and decolonization in the mid-twentieth century. While part of the longer history of development in global history, modernization ideas evolved in response to the Depression and the international instability it brought to the 1930s. In response to threatening ideologies and global fragmentation, Americans articulated a global vision for modernization that would be transferred across global war into the global Cold War.