Formulating development : How Nestlé shaped the aid industry

Abstract

From an international boycott in the 1970s to the latest medical warnings against ultra-processed foods and their suspected role in the global obesity crisis, Nestlé has come under intense public scrutiny. For its critics, the Swiss multinational epitomises the food industry’s negative impacts on development and the Global South. What has so far eluded historical inquiry, however, is that from its creation in 1866 through much of the twentieth century, Nestlé shaped, and was shaped by, the ideas and practices of international development. In Formulating development, historian Lola Wilhelm takes the reader on a journey from the Alpine valleys of late nineteenth century Switzerland to the hospitals of post-independence West Africa. She finds that Nestlé earned a seat at the table of international aid by partnering respected institutions, such as Save the Children and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. Formulating development tells the exclusive story of Nestlé’s ventures on the humanitarian market brokered the Red Cross in wartime Europe, of its clinical trials in Helvetic and Senegalese maternities, and of its agricultural modernisation schemes in Switzerland, Mexico, India, and the Ivory Coast. But these corporate manoeuvres were never to everyone’s taste. Against the backdrop of two World Wars, the Cold War, and the downfall of Europe’s colonial empires, the book uncovers the long-forgotten alliances and controversies that continue to shape the aid industry. Based on extensive research in the firm’s own historical archives, the records of leading aid agencies, and the experiences of hospital patients and purported aid recipients, Formulating development interrogates the legacies of this history for international development today.