This chapter provides background information related to the rise of first, development thinking and second, social development globally. It shows how this transpired after the Second World War. Thereafter, it discusses development thinking around the world and traces it back to the period of the 1940s and early 1950s. During this era, theorising about development, which was then referred to as development economics, was perceived as something that only focussed on challenges in the developing world which was known at the time as the ‘Third World’. Social development evolved out of this global movement pertaining to the thinking, theorisation and conceptualisation of development. The chapter also shows how economic development or growth was erroneously thought of as the only avenue that could raise the quality of life of all people, but it did not actually manage to do so. The social dimensions of development that started to gain ground from the 1960s onwards became associated with the social development approach.