"Foreign Aid to the Ghettos": The United States and the Global Threat of 'Underdevelopment,' 1945-1970.

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For my research project I would like to focus on the transnational context of US developmental efforts at home during thepostwar period, focusing in particular on the 1960s. Contrary to the triumphalist assertions of some post-warmodernisation theorists, for most of its history the perceived problem of 'underdevelopment' has not been restricted tothe world outside the United States. After WW2, techniques honed to deal with this problem on Indian reservations andJapanese internment camps were applied in the global South by philanthropic foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller,before circulating back to the United States as policymakers and commentators increasingly fixed their gaze on 'racialtinderbox' of America's segregated cities. The unrest in America's cities during the 1960s was considered by many to bea national security threat on parr with that posed by the deepening war in Indochina. It was also perceived to be aproblem which shared common roots. Both the pockets of so-called 'underdevelopment' in America's cities, as well asthe lack of 'development' in South Vietnam, were understood to threaten US national security in similar ways and forsimilar reasons. I want to explore how this globalising of the threat of underdevelopment was accomplished by thecirculation of individuals between the United States and the global South, and what impact this had on the way thatpolicymakers and foundation officials responded to the 'Great Uprising' in US cities.