"Free World" is a Cold War-era term often used to describe countries that were not in the sphere of influence of, or allied with communist states, particularly the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. It is often used interchangeably with "First World".
The term usually refers to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and organizations such as the European Union and NATO. In addition, the "Free World" occasionally includes the Commonwealth realms, Japan, Israel, and India.
Authoritarian and dictatorial states were also included in the "Free World", provided that they were either capitalistic or anti-communist. Notable examples include Spain under Francisco Franco, apartheid-era South Africa, and Greece under the military junta of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Read more about Free World: Origins, Recent Usage, Criticism, "Leader of The Free World", In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or world:
“Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.”
—Nelson Mandela (b. 1918)
“Aunt Sally she was one of the mixed-upest looking persons I ever see; except one, and that was uncle Silas, when he come in, and they told it all to him. It kind of made him drunk, as you may say, and he didn’t know nothing at all the rest of the day, and preached a prayer meeting sermon that night that give him a rattling ruputation, because the oldest man in the world couldn’t a understood it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)