Formulating development
How Nestlé shaped the aid industry
By Lola Wilhelm
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- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 288
- Price: £90.00
- Published Date: July 2025
- Series: Humanitarianism: Key Debates and New Approaches
Description
In the 1970s, Nestlé became a lightning rod for criticism against the food industry's negative impacts on humans and their environment, especially in the Global South. But what has so far eluded historical scrutiny is that the picture was more nuanced.
This book tells the exclusive story of how the Swiss food giant, and more broadly corporate capitalism, have shaped the aid industry since the late nineteenth century. It follows Nestlé's bid for a share of the humanitarian market brokered by the Red Cross in wartime Europe, of its clinical trials in Swiss and Senegalese maternities, and of its agricultural modernisation schemes in Mexico, India, and the Ivory Coast.
Based on extensive research in the firm's own historical archives and the records of national and international aid agencies, the volume interrogates the legacies of this long history for international development today.
Contents
Introduction
I The Swiss laboratory
1 At the service of agriculture
2 To walk along with science
3 Great relief
II International development
4 To help under-developed countries
5 The health of children in protein-poor regions
6 The Nestlé Foundation
Conclusions
Annexes
Sources
Bibliograph
Author
Lola Wilhelm is Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Zurich