The conceptions and treatment of poverty were quite different before 1940. In colonial times the concern with poverty was conditioned by the belief that, even if the natives could be somewhat enlightened by the presence of the coloniser, not much could be done about their poverty.

It was because their economic development was thought pointless; the natives' capacity for science and technology, the basis for economic progress, was seen as nil. However, within Asian, African and Latin or Native American societies, vernacular societies had developed ways of defining and treating poverty that accommodated visions of community, frugality and sufficiency. It is true that massive poverty in the modern sense appeared only when the spread of the market economy broke down the communities.

As a result, it deprived millions of people of access to land, water and other resources; with the consolidation of the market economy, systemic issues became inevitable. It is important to know the break that occurred in the conceptions and management of poverty, first with the emergence of capitalism in Europe, and later with the advent of development in the Third World. The first break is described in terms of the advent in the nineteenth century of systems for dealing with the poor, based on assistance provided by impersonal institutions.

Philanthropy occupied an important place in this transition. The transformation of the poor into the assisted had a profound consequence: the modernisation of poverty invariably affected vernacular relations.