Apostles of Development

Six Economists and the World They Made

David Engerman (, Yale University)

$73.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Oxford University Press
01 March 2026

Development studies; Asian history; Social research & statistics; Economics & Business; Economics

Apostles of Development recounts the work of six individuals, all former classmates at Cambridge University, who helped make international development--the effort to reduce poverty and inequality around the world--into a juggernaut of the second half of the twentieth century. International development employed millions, affected billions, and spent trillions; it held the hopes of the former colonies to create an economic independence to match their newfound political one, and the plans of wealthy counties to build an enduring economic order.

The six Apostles in this book include some of South Asia's best-known names, like Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen and long-serving Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as leading academics (Jagdish Bhagwati) and key policy-makers in both national and international circles. Taken together, this group both reflected and shaped the growing enterprise of international development from the time they left Cambridge in the mid-1950s well into the 2010s.

For many years, the second half of the twentieth century was understood primarily through the lens of the Cold War. And yet, for the majority of the world, living in what was then called the Third World (and which is now called the Global South), development was a constant, while American-Soviet geopolitics only occasionally impinged upon their lives. And these six, as much as any other group, changed the way economists theorized development and aid officials practiced it. Their biographies, then, are the history of development.

Based on newly available archival documents from 10 countries, and on interviews with four of the subjects, the widows of the other two, and almost 100 of their colleagues, friends, classmates, and rivals, this book combines riveting personal accounts with a sweeping history of one of the enduring human activities of the late 20th century and early 21st centuries: creating a more prosperous and equitable world.

By: David Engerman ( Yale University)
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 241mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 49mm
Weight: 871g
ISBN: 9780197766200
ISBN 10: 019776620X
Pages: 576
Publication Date: 01 March 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

David C. Engerman is Leitner International Interdisciplinary Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University. He is the author of The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India, Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts (OUP, 2009), and Modernization from the Other Shore: American Intellectuals and the Romance of Russian Development and the editor or coeditor of multiple collections, including a volume of the Cambridge History of America and the World. Engerman served as elected president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2016.

Reviews for Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made

A splendid book - deft, intelligent, empathetic: bringing to life some of the most remarkable individuals and most important themes in the creation of the modern world. * Rory Stewart, Co-Host of The Rest Is Politics podcast and author of Politics on the Edge * Apostles of Development is a bracing, brilliant new history of international development, told through the interlocking biographies of six South Asian economists. David Engerman turns received wisdom on its head in his account of how ideas, individuals, and institutions from the Global South have reshaped the global economy-and the economics profession-with lasting consequences for our highly unequal world. This will be essential readings for historians, economists, and policymakers alike. * Sunil Amrith, Author of The Burning Earth and MacArthur Prize winner * David Engerman is one of the leading historians of development, not least because his perspective is always new. Apostles of Development does not disappoint. This beautifully wrought social history of ideas dissects the rich, world-changing thinking of a generation of South Asian economists. * Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History and Capitalism, EUI * This remarkable book is at once a group portrait of six economists from South Asia and a global history of the ideas, policies and practices of development that they espoused. Prodigiously researched and engagingly written, Apostles of Development is indispensable to understanding the postcolonial trajectories of India and Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka * and indeed much of the Global South.Srinath Raghavan, Author of Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India * This book narrates the life journey of six South Asians who studied economics in Cambridge (UK) in the 1950s-two remained in academia becoming superstars, three became profoundly influential policy makers and institution builders and one became a transformative Finance Minister and Prime Minister. The six stayed close friends all through and that is what makes their collective story, narrated by Engerman in his usual scholarly yet engaging style, all the more fascinating. * Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament and former Minister * Engerman, a historian, provides a fascinating portrait of six South Asian economists who had a tremendous impact on the theory and practice ofdevelopment economics. * Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Foreign Affairs *