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Resumo

This article traces the shift in demographic thought from the Malthusian framework that predominated in English-language political economic writings of the nineteenth century to demographic transition theory, which prevailed by the mid-twentieth century. An analysis of demographic theory offers particular insights onto the intellectual history of development because the question of population served as the point of departure for various development theories. While the scholarly literature on U.S. development ideas and projects has grown increasingly rich and sophisticated in recent decades, it remains wedded to the notion that there was a stark rupture between American development theory and the conditions in and relationships to the underdeveloped world that it sought to describe. This belief threatens to trivialize the significance of violent economic, environmental, and political circumstances that made development a useful lens of interpretation. Focusing especially on ideas about India, this article examines how, in an era of economic crises, intellectual and political exchange between British colonial, Indian nationalist, and American thinkers concerning the problems of disease, famine, and immigration enabled a transformation in demographic thinking. The concept of development did not simply diffuse from the West to the Rest. Global conflict and dialogue—both between and within empires—enabled its emergence such that, by the early 1950s, peoples in various parts of the world had already taken the ideal of development for granted.

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