Riots could be expected: Toward a global history of protest and reaction at the World Bank

Examining an all-but-forgotten episode of large-scale protest at the 1970 annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Copenhagen, Denmark, this article asks how officials at the World Bank understood and reacted to such protest. How did they characterise the protestors’ demands in the moment? Why and how did they feel the need to respond, and what strategies did they use to do so? And what does that response tell us about how officials at the World Bank understood about the relationship between development and social upheaval? Using heretofore unexamined institutional records, this article argues that already in 1970, World Bank officials were deeply concerned with public opinion about their institutions in both the developed and developing worlds—and therefore found themselves having to reckon with the riots that threatened to derail not just their meetings, but their mission.