Environmental Determinism

A highly controversial theory, environmental determinism has influenced geographical thought for many centuries, and became a dominant philosophical approach in American geography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Environmental determinism, in its simplest form, argues that human cultural traits are either determined, or at least strongly influenced, by the physical environment in which culture originates. It is a theory with strong elements of ethnocentrism.

The foundations of the theory may be found in the writings of many ancient thinkers, dating back at least to the ancient Greeks. Herodotus, for example, linked the physical environment of some of the peoples he described to cultural characteristics he (allegedly) observed, and centuries later, Aristotle argued that climate had a strong influence on human character and behavior. The Greek geographer Strabo, who lived at the beginning of the Christian era, continued this tradition, suggesting that peoples who lived in warmer climates lacked energy and initiative, while those who lived in cold latitudes were less intelligent. Nor was the deterministic view confined to European thinking—the medieval Muslim geographer Ibn Khaldun (see sidebar) was convinced that the differing mental and cultural qualities between urban and rural dwellers were due to the “fact” that living in a city made one more intelligent than living a nomadic existence. 

During the Enlightenment, perhaps the most influential proponent of environmental determinism was the French philosopher Charles Montesquieu, who believed that climate greatly shapes the nature of human society and even proposed that various political systems were the product of the climate in which they developed. Tropical climates, in the view of Montesquieu, invariably led to the emergence of despotic regimes and spawned slavery, while more moderate climates (meaning the climate of Europe) gave rise to democratic systems. Montesquieu’s ideas were widely accepted by European scholars of the time and would subsequently influence some of the most important social scientists of the 19th century.