In one of the papers published in 1981 and contained in P.T. Bauer's Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion, the author addresses the Western self-accusation which erroneously suggests that the plight of countries in the so called Third World was or is being caused by Western powers.
Writes Lord Bauer:
Acceptance of emphatic routine allegations that the West is responsible for Third World poverty reflects and reinforces Western feelings of guilt. It has enfeebled Western diplomacy, both towards the ideologically much more aggressive Soviet bloc and also towards the Third World. And the West has come to abase itself before countries with negligible resources and no real power. Yet the allegations can be shown to be without foundation. They are readily accepted because the Western public has little first-hand knowledge of the Third World, and because of widespread feelings of guilt. The West has never had it so good, and has never felt so bad about it. [...]
Far from the West having caused the poverty in the Third World, contact with the West has been the principal agent of material progress there. The materially more advanced societies and regions of the Third World are those with which the West established the most numerous, diversified and extensive contacts: the cash-crop producing areas and entrepot ports of South-East Asia, West Africa and Latin America; the mineral-producing areas of Africa and the Middle East; and cities and ports throughout Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. The level of material achievement usually diminishes as one moves away from the foci of Western impact. The poorest and most backward people have few or no external contacts; witness the aborigines, pygmies and desert peoples. [...]
The role of Western contacts in the material progress of Black Africa deserves further notice. As late as the second half of the nineteenth century Black Africa was without even the simplest, most basic ingredients of modern social and economic life. These were brought there by Westerners over the last hundred years or so. This is true of such fundamentals as public security and law and order; wheeled traffic (Black Africa never invented the wheel) and mechanical transport (before the arrival of Westerners, transport in Black Africa was almost entirely by human muscle); roads, railways and man-made ports; the application of science and technology to economic activity; towns with substantial buildings, clean water and sewerage facilities; public health care, hospitals and the control of endemic and epidemic diseases; formal education. These advances resulted from peaceful commercial contacts. These contacts also made easier the elimination of the Atlantic slave trade, the virtual elimination of the slave trade from Africa to the Middle East, and even the elimination of slavery within Africa. [...]
The West has not caused the famines in the Third World. These have occurred in backward regions with practically no external commerce. The absence of external trading links is often one aspect of the backwardness of these regions. At times it reflects the policies of the rulers who are hostile to traders, especially to nonindigenous traders, and often even to private property. As a matter of interest, it has proved difficult to get emergency supplies to some of the Sahelian areas because of poor communications and official apathy or hostility. Attempts permanently to support the populations of such backward areas with Western official donations would inhibit the development of viable agriculture there.
Contrary to the various allegations and accusations noted in this sectiom the higher level of consumption in the West is not achieved by depriving others of what they have produced. Western consumption is more than paid for by Western production. This production not only finances domestic consumption but also provides the capital for domestic and foreign investment as well as foreign aid. Thus the gap between production in the West and in the Third World is even greater than the gap in consumption.
[...]
The entire paper by P.T. Bauer: Western Guilt and Third World Poverty
