C. Logre Mordicus

In the Third World, the possibility of economic development can bring a strange form of “modernity.” For example, Madagascar, formerly a jewel in France’s illustrious colonial empire (45,000 deaths resulted from the French quelling of the 1947 uprising), had long been self-sufficient.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a relatively numerous and prosperous bourgeoisie had started to emerge, but it was destroyed by colonialism. The global economic crisis (fall in prices of raw materials, breakdown of local industries) coincided with ruling class mismanagement and led to economic catastrophe and to a suffocating spiral of decline: agricultural collapse, dependence on food provisions, the need for imports without having anything to sell, debts and pressures from the International Monetary Fund, currency devaluation of 700%, poverty, the exodus from the countryside, etc.

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