Alfred Sauvy

Who was Alfred Sauvy?

Alfred Sauvy was a demographer, anthropologist and historian of the French economy. Sauvy coined the term Third World in reference to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War. In an article published in the French magazine, L'Observateur on August 14, 1952, Sauvy said:

"...car enfin, ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut lui aussi, être quelque chose"

"...because at the end this ignored, exploited, scorned Third World like the Third Estate, wants to become something too".

In using the expression Third World here he was paraphrasing Sieyès's famous sentence about the Third Estate during the French Revolution.