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Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made

Autor David Engerman
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 27 oct 2025

Nivel de studiu: master și referință profesională. În Apostles of Development, David Engerman propune o schimbare de paradigmă în analiza istoriei recente, mutând accentul de la dinamica Războiului Rece către fenomenul dezvoltării internaționale. Ne-a atras atenția modul în care autorul transformă biografiile a șase economiști de renume — foști colegi la Cambridge University în anii '50 — într-o istorie vie a politicilor care au modelat Sudul Global. Printre acești „apostoli” se numără personalități precum laureatul Nobel Amartya Sen și fostul premier indian Manmohan Singh, ale căror viziuni au transformat lupta împotriva sărăciei într-un mecanism global ce a mobilizat trilioane de dolari.

Din punct de vedere metodologic, volumul impresionează prin rigoarea documentării, utilizând arhive din zece țări și interviuri extinse cu subiecții sau apropiații acestora. Această abordare completează și extinde cadrul propus de The Development Century de Stephen J. Macekura, oferind o perspectivă mult mai personalizată și ancorată în contextul specific al Asiei de Sud. Dacă lucrările anterioare ale lui David Engerman, precum The Cambridge History of America and the World 4 Volume Hardback Set, explorau angajamentul american la scară largă, acest nou titlu se concentrează pe intersecția dintre mediul academic britanic și politicile naționale de dezvoltare din fostele colonii.

Credem că relevanța cărții rezidă în capacitatea de a explica cum teorii economice abstracte au devenit politici de stat care au afectat miliarde de oameni. Stilul narativ este precis, evitând jargonul excesiv, dar păstrând complexitatea necesară unei analize de istorie intelectuală. Este o resursă esențială pentru înțelegerea modului în care independența politică a fost dublată de efortul pentru independență economică în a doua jumătate a secolului XX.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780197766200
ISBN-10: 019776620X
Pagini: 576
Dimensiuni: 164 x 241 x 49 mm
Greutate: 0.87 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

De ce să citești această carte

Această lucrare este indispensabilă pentru cercetătorii în economie politică și studii de dezvoltare care doresc să înțeleagă geneza instituțiilor internaționale actuale. Cititorul câștigă o perspectivă rară asupra modului în care rețelele academice de elită, precum cea de la Cambridge, au influențat destinele națiunilor din Global South. Este un studiu de caz magistral despre puterea ideilor în transformarea realității materiale globale.


Despre autor

David Engerman este profesor de istorie la Brandeis University, fiind o voce autoritară în studiul istoriei internaționale și al relațiilor externe. Expertiza sa acoperă intersecția dintre ideologie, economie și diplomație, teme explorate pe larg în proiecte editoriale de anvergură, precum coordonarea seriei The Cambridge History of America and the World. În Apostles of Development, Engerman își valorifică abilitățile de istoric de arhivă pentru a reconstrui rețele intelectuale complexe, oferind o interpretare nouă asupra modului în care expertiza economică a fost exportată și adaptată în context post-colonial.


Descriere

Apostles of Development recounts the work of six individuals, all former classmates at Cambridge University, who helped make international development--the effort to reduce poverty and inequality around the world--into a juggernaut of the second half of the twentieth century. International development employed millions, affected billions, and spent trillions; it held the hopes of the former colonies to create an economic independence to match their newfound political one, and the plans of wealthy counties to build an enduring economic order. The six Apostles in this book include some of South Asia's best-known names, like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and long-serving Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as leading academics (Jagdish Bhagwati) and key policy-makers in both national and international circles. Taken together, this group both reflected and shaped the growing enterprise of international development from the time they left Cambridge in the mid-1950s well into the 2010s. For many years, the second half of the twentieth century was understood primarily through the lens of the Cold War. And yet, for the majority of the world, living in what was then called the Third World (and which is now called the Global South), development was a constant, while American-Soviet geopolitics only occasionally impinged upon their lives. And these six, as much as any other group, changed the way economists theorized development and aid officials practiced it. Their biographies, then, are the history of development. Based on newly available archival documents from 10 countries, and on interviews with four of the subjects, the widows of the other two, and almost 100 of their colleagues, friends, classmates, and rivals, this book combines riveting personal accounts with a sweeping history of one of the enduring human activities of the late 20th century and early 21st centuries: creating a more prosperous and equitable world.

Recenzii

A splendid book - deft, intelligent, empathetic: bringing to life some of the most remarkable individuals and most important themes in the creation of the modern world.
Apostles of Development is a bracing, brilliant new history of international development, told through the interlocking biographies of six South Asian economists. David Engerman turns received wisdom on its head in his account of how ideas, individuals, and institutions from the Global South have reshaped the global economy-and the economics profession-with lasting consequences for our highly unequal world. This will be essential readings for historians, economists, and policymakers alike.
David Engerman is one of the leading historians of development, not least because his perspective is always new. Apostles of Development does not disappoint. This beautifully wrought social history of ideas dissects the rich, world-changing thinking of a generation of South Asian economists.
This remarkable book is at once a group portrait of six economists from South Asia and a global history of the ideas, policies and practices of development that they espoused. Prodigiously researched and engagingly written, Apostles of Development is indispensable to understanding the postcolonial trajectories of India and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
This book narrates the life journey of six South Asians who studied economics in Cambridge (UK) in the 1950s-two remained in academia becoming superstars, three became profoundly influential policy makers and institution builders and one became a transformative Finance Minister and Prime Minister. The six stayed close friends all through and that is what makes their collective story, narrated by Engerman in his usual scholarly yet engaging style, all the more fascinating.
Engerman, a historian, provides a fascinating portrait of six South Asian economists who had a tremendous impact on the theory and practice ofdevelopment economics.
David Engerman's latest book is a thrill to read for any practitioner of development economics, but especially those who have studied or worked in South Asia... It's a masterful intellectual and policy history...[and] much more than a historical treatise; it appears at a time of great tension in the global development system over who sets priorities, how ideas travel, and what "development" should mean in an era of inequality, debt, and climate crisis.

Notă biografică

David C. Engerman is Leitner International Interdisciplinary Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. He is the author of The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (OUP, 2009), and Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development and the editor or coeditor of multiple collections, including a volume of the Cambridge History of America and the World. Engerman served as elected president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2016.