The Development Dichotomy: Colonial India’s Accession to the ILO’s Governing Body (1919–22)

Thomas Gidney

Journal of Global History, 2023, vol. 18, issue 2, 259-280

Abstract: At its founding in 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) selected its Governing Body from eight ‘states of Chief Industrial Importance’. The ILO’s attempt to define industrial importance was predicated on its seemingly expert-driven and statistical impartiality. As a technical organization, this standard was created to depoliticize the selection of its Governing Body. Yet, with its utilization of relative economic indicators, the standard ended up recreating a highly Eurocentric Governing Body. Resistance to these metrics by aggregately large but relatively underdeveloped economies, such as colonial India, reveals the inherently political nature of attempting to define industrial ‘importance’. This article examines the little-known history of how the Indian delegation to the ILO challenged the ILO’s Eurocentric metrics, constituting what it meant to be industrially important. In doing so, this article questions to what extent ‘technical’ international organizations can remain apolitical spaces and how our contemporary international institutions are responding to the increasing politicization of their function.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jglhis:v:18:y:2023:i:2:p:259-280_6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Global History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().