The relative economic backwardness had therefore remained and was one of the underlying reasons for the political and military weakness of the state.

The combined impact of civil strife and foreign interventions had doomed Honduras to a position of relative economic and social backwardness throughout the nineteenth century.

This isolated pocket of advanced economic development stood in stark contrast to the relative backwardness of most of the country.

They see instead relative backwardness and an unmistakable fear of war.

This situation was defended on the grounds of Japan's relative backwardness in economic, social, legal and political terms.

Given the relative backwardness of their technology, Fearless, alone, could annihilate everything they have in a stand-up battle.

The 1984 event however showed the relative backwardness of China's armed forces, which had only recently reached the technological level of the Soviet Union 25 years earlier.

Over the last two centuries minority unrest has often stemmed from a thwarted intelligentsia impatient for power and capable of perceiving its nationality's relative backwardness.

China's leaders also know how much their power over international affairs remains constrained by China's relative backwardness, economic and military.

They feel disoriented by the pluralism of the modern age and humiliated by the relative backwardness of the Arab world.