<P> The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia . It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement . In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world - systemic economic division as "periphery" countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic "core". </P> <P> Due to the complex history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed - upon definition of the Third World . Some countries in the Communist Bloc, such as Cuba, were often regarded as "Third World". Because many Third World countries were economically poor, and non-industrialized, it became a stereotype to refer to poor countries as "third world countries", yet the "Third World" term is also often taken to include newly industrialized countries like Brazil, India and China now more commonly referred to as part of BRIC . Historically, some European countries were non-aligned and a few of these were and are very prosperous, including Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia . </P> <P> French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World (French: Tiers Monde), referring to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War . His usage was a reference to the Third Estate, the commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed the clergy and nobles, who composed the First Estate and Second Estate, respectively . Sauvy wrote, "This third world ignored, exploited, despised like the third estate also wants to be something ." He conveyed the concept of political non-alignment with either the capitalist or communist bloc . </P> <P> The "Three Worlds Theory" developed by Mao Zedong is different from the Western theory of the Three Worlds or Third World . For example, in the Western theory, China and India belong respectively to the second and third worlds, but in Mao's theory both China and India are part of the Third World which he defined as consisting of exploited nations . </P>

When was the term third world first used