Event Details

Dr Thomas Gidney, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Debates at the WTO, as well as climate conferences, often debate who is a developing country and who is not. Recent attempts to create a statistically driven standard to define developing status, however, are part of a long and fraught legacy of attempting to apply statistical standards to often subjective definitions. In this paper, I will present one of the earliest examples as to how the International Labour Organisation determined its Governing Body by determining 'States of Chief Industrial Importance' and how an aggregately large but relatively underdeveloped colony such as British India was able to challenge and overturn the definition of industrial importance.