Economic development as a field of study started right after the end of World War II, which coincided with the independence declaration of a number of colonial areas m Asia and Africa. Curiously enough, the founding fathers of this new field of study were Western economists, foremost Americans, driven by the need for experts in rich countries to allocate development aid to developing countries- Economists have for iong realized that economic theories developed in the advanced industrialized countries were not suited to he applied to developing countries due to different conditions prevailing in these countries. During the early days, grand theories of economic development were being launched to understand the process of development and to pursue appropriate development strategiesBut in the course of time these grand development theories have lost much of their vigor as the development process in reality js much more complex as can be caught by simple genera! theories. The paper then explores the further development of development thinking during trie past fifty years.