Environmental determinism (also known as climatic
determinism or geographical determinism) is
the study of how the physical environment
predisposes societies and states towards particular
development trajectories.
Nineteenth-century approaches held that climate
and terrain largely determined human activity
and psychology, and it was associated with
institutionalized racism and eugenics.
Many scholars underscore that this approach
supported colonialism and eurocentrism, and
devalued human agency in non-Western societies.
Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, Ian Morris,
and other social scientists sparked a revival
of the theory during the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries.
This "neo-environmental determinism" school
of thought examines how geographic and ecological
forces influence state-building, economic
development, and institutions.
== A history of thought ==
=== 
Classical and medieval periods ===
Early theories of environmental determinism
in Ancient China, Ancient Greece, Ancient
Rome suggested that environmental features
completely determined the physical and intellectual
qualities of whole societies.
Guan Zhong (720–645 BC), an early chancellor
in China, held that the qualities of major
rivers shaped the character of surrounding
peoples.
Swift and twisting rivers made people "greedy,
uncouth, and warlike".
The ancient Greek philosopher Hippocrates
wrote a similar account in his treatise "Airs,
Waters, Places".Writers in the medieval Middle
East also produced theories of environmental
determinism.
The Afro-Arab writer al-Jahiz argued that
the skin color of people and livestock were
determined by the water, soil, and heat of
their environments.
He compared the color of black basalt in the
northern Najd to the skin color of the peoples
living there to support his theory.Ibn Khaldun,
the Arab sociologist and polymath, similarly
linked skin color to environmental factors.
In his Muqaddimah (1377), he wrote that black
skin was due to the hot climate of sub-Saharan
Africa and not due to African lineage.
He thereby challenged Hamitic theories of
race that held that the sons of Ham (son of
Noah) were cursed with black skin.
Many writings of Ibn Khaldun were translated
during the colonial era in order to advance
the colonial propaganda machine.Ibn Khaldun
believed that the physical environment influenced
non-physical factors in addition to skin color.
He argued that soil, climate, and food determined
whether people were nomadic or sedentary,
and what customs and ceremonies they held.
His writings may have influenced the later
writings of Montesquieu during the 18th century
through the traveller Jean Chardin, who travelled
to Persia and described theories resembling
those of Ibn Khaldun.
=== Western colonial period ===
Environmental determinism has been widely
criticized as a tool to legitimize colonialism,
racism, and imperialism in Africa, North America,
South America, and Asia.
Environmental determinism enabled geographers
to scientifically justify the supremacy of
white European races and the naturalness of
imperialism.
The scholarship bolstered religious justifications
and in some cases superseded them during the
late 19th century.Many writers, including
Thomas Jefferson, supported and legitimized
African colonization by arguing that tropical
climates made the people uncivilized.
Jefferson argued that tropical climates encouraged
laziness, relaxed attitudes, promiscuity and
generally degenerative societies, while the
frequent variability in the weather of the
middle and northern latitudes led to stronger
work ethics and civilized societies.
Adolf Hitler also made use of this theory
to extol the supremacy of the Nordic race.Defects
of character supposedly generated by tropical
climates were believed to be inheritable under
the Lamarckian theory of inheritance of acquired
characteristics, a discredited precursor to
the Darwinian theory of natural selection.
The outdated theory begins with the observation
that an organism faced with environmental
pressures may undergo physiological changes
during its lifetime through the process of
acclimatization.
Lamarckianism suggested that those physiological
changes may be passed directly to offspring,
without the need for offspring to develop
the trait in the same manner.Geographical
societies like the Royal Geographical Society
and the Société de géographie supported
imperialism by funding explorers and other
colonial proponents.
Scientific societies acted similarly.
Acclimatization societies directly supported
colonial enterprises and enjoyed their benefits.
The writings of Lamarck provided theoretical
backing for the acclimatization doctrines.
The Société Zoologique d'Acclimatation was
largely founded by Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire—son
of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a close
colleague and supporter of Lamarck.Ellen Churchill
Semple, a prominent environmental determinism
scholar, applied her theories in a case study
which focused on the Philippines, where she
mapped civilization and wildness onto the
topography of the islands.
Other scholars argued that climate and topography
caused specific character traits to appear
in a given populations.
Scholars thereby imposed racial stereotypes
on whole societies.
Imperial powers rationalized labor exploitation
by claiming that tropical peoples were morally
inferior.The role of environmental determinism
in rationalizing and legitimizing racism,
ethnocentrism and economic inequality has
consequently drawn strong criticism.Many modern
scientists have also critiqued classical environmental
determinism as unscientific.
Carl Sauer criticized the premature generalizations
resulting from bias in environmentalism in
1924.
He argued that to define geography as the
study of environmental influences is to assume
in advance that such influences do operate,
and that science cannot be based upon or committed
to preconceptions.
Furthermore, since evolutionary change manifests
over very long time periods, some argue that
the ability to adequately correlate human
behaviour with any specific environmental
condition is speculative at best and impossible
at worst.David Landes similarly condemns of
what he terms the unscientific moral geography
of Ellsworth Huntington.
He argues that Huntington undermined geography
as a science by attributing all human activity
to physical influences so that he might classify
civilizations hierarchically – favoring
those civilizations he considered best.
=== Late-20th-century growth of neo-environmental
determinism ===
Environmental determinism was revived in the
late-twentieth century as neo-environmental
determinism.
The new term coined by the social scientist
and critic Andrew Sluyter.
Sluyter argues that neo-environmental determinism
does not sufficiently break with its classical
and imperial precursors.Neo-environmental
determinism examines how the physical environment
predisposes societies and states towards particular
trajectories of economic and political development.
It explores how geographic and ecological
forces influence state-building, economic
development, and institutions.
It also addresses fears surrounding the effects
of modern climate change.
Jared Diamond was influential in the resurgence
of environmental determinism due to the popularity
of his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, which
addresses the geographic origins of state
formation prior to 1500 A.D.Neo-environmental
determinism scholars debate how much the physical
environment shapes economic and political
institutions.
Economic historians Stanley Engerman and Kenneth
Sokoloff argue that factor endowments greatly
affected "institutional" development in the
Americas, by which they mean the tendency
to more free (democratic, free market) or
unfree (dictatorial, economically restrictive)
regimes.
In contrast, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson,
and James A. Robinson underscore that the
geographic factors most influenced institutional
development during early state formation and
colonialism.
They argue that geographic differences cannot
explain economic growth disparities after
1500 A.D. directly, except through their effects
on economic and political institutions.Economists
Jeffrey Sachs and John Luke Gallup have examined
the direct impacts of geographic and climatic
factors on economic development, especially
the role of geography on the cost of trade
and access to markets, the disease environment,
and agricultural productivity.The contemporary
global warming crisis has also impacted environmental
determinism scholarship.
Jared Diamond draws similarities between the
changing climate conditions that brought down
the Easter Island civilization and global
warming in his book Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Alan Kolata, Charles Ortloff, and Gerald Huag
similarly describe the Tiwanaku empire and
Maya civilization collapses as caused by climate
events such as drought.
Peter deMenocal, Just as the earthworks in
the deserts of the west grew out of notions
of landscape painting, the growth of public
art stimulated artists to engage the urban
landscape as another environment and also
as a platform to engage ideas and concepts
about the environment to a larger audience.
A scientist at the Lamont–Doherty Earth
Observatory at Columbia University, writes
that societal collapse due to climate change
is possible today.
== Ecological and geographic impacts on early
state formation ==
=== 
Effects of species endowments, climate, and
continental axes prior to 1500 ===
In the Pulitzer Prize winning Guns, Germs,
and Steel (1999), author Jared Diamond points
to geography as the answer to why certain
states were able to grow and develop faster
and stronger than others.
His theory cited the natural environment and
raw materials a civilization was blessed with
as factors for success, instead of popular
century old claims of racial and cultural
superiority.
Diamond says that these natural endowments
began with the dawn of man, and favored Eurasian
civilizations due to their location along
similar latitudes, suitable farming climate,
and early animal domestication.Diamond argues
that early states located along the same latitude
lines were uniquely suited to take advantage
of similar climates, making it easier for
crops, livestock, and farming techniques to
spread.
Crops such as wheat and barley were simple
to grow and easy to harvest, and regions suitable
for their cultivation saw high population
densities and the growth of early cities.
The ability to domesticate herd animals, which
had no natural fear of humans, high birth
rates, and an innate hierarchy, gave some
civilizations the advantages of free labor,
fertilizers, and war animals.
The east-west orientation of Eurasia allowed
for knowledge capital to spread quickly, and
writing systems to keep track of advanced
farming techniques gave people the ability
to store and build upon a knowledge base across
generations.
Craftsmanship flourished as a surplus of food
from farming allowed some groups the freedom
to explore and create, which lead to the development
of metallurgy and advances in technology.
While the advantageous geography helped to
develop early societies, the close proximity
in which humans and their animals lived led
to the spread of disease across Eurasia.
Over several centuries, rampant disease decimated
populations, but ultimately led to disease
resistant communities.
Diamond suggests that these chains of causation
led to European and Asian civilizations holding
a dominant place in the world today.Diamond
uses the Spanish conquistadors' conquering
of the Americas as a case study for his theory.
He argues that the Europeans took advantage
of their environment to build large and complex
states complete with advanced technology and
weapons.
The Incans and other native groups were not
as blessed, suffering from a north–south
orientation that prevented the flow of goods
and knowledge across the continent.
The Americas also lacked the animals, metals,
and complex writing systems of Eurasia which
prevented them from achieving the military
or biological protections needed to fight
off the European threat.Diamond's theory has
not gone without criticism.
It was notably attacked for not providing
enough detail regarding causation of environmental
variables, and for leaving logical gaps in
reasoning.
Geographer Andrew Sluyter argued that Diamond
was just as ignorant as the racists of the
19th century.
Sluyter challenged Diamond's theory since
it seemed to suggest that environmental conditions
lead to gene selection, which then lead to
wealth and power for certain civilizations.
Sluyter also attacks environmental determinism
by condemning it as a highly studied and popular
field based entirely on Diamond's "quick and
dirty" combination of natural and social sciences.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson similarly
criticized Diamond's work in their book Why
Nations Fail.
They contend that the theory is outdated and
can not effectively explain differences in
economic growth after 1500 or the reasons
why states that are geographically close can
exhibit vast differences in wealth.
They instead favored an institutional approach
in which a society's success or failure is
based on the underlying strength of its institutions.
=== Geography and pre-colonial African state-building
===
==== 
The effects of climate and land abundance
on the development of state systems ====
In his book States and Power in Africa, political
scientist Jeffrey Herbst argues that environmental
conditions help explain why, in contrast to
other parts of the world such as Europe, many
pre-colonial societies in Africa did not develop
into dense, settled, hierarchical societies
with strong state control that competed with
neighboring states for people and territory.Herbst
argues that the European state-building experience
was highly idiosyncratic because it occurred
under systemic geographic pressures that favored
wars of conquest – namely, passable terrain,
land scarcity, and high-population densities.
Faced with the constant threat of war, political
elites sent administrators and armed forces
from the urban centers into rural hinterlands
to raise taxes, recruit soldiers, and fortify
buffer zones.
European states consequently developed strong
institutions and capital-periphery linkages.By
contrast, geographic and climatic factors
in pre-colonial Africa made establishing absolute
control over particular pieces of land prohibitively
costly.
For example, because African farmers relied
on rain-fed agriculture and consequently invested
little in particular pieces of land, they
could easily flee rulers rather than fight.Some
early African empires, like the Ashanti Empire,
successfully projected power over large distances
by building roads.The largest pre-colonial
polities arose in the Sudanian Savanna belt
of West Africa because the horses and camels
could transport armies over the terrain.
In other areas, no centralized political organizations
existed above the village level.African states
did not develop more responsive institutions
under colonial rule or post-independence.
Colonial powers had little incentive to develop
state institutions to protect their colonies
against invasion, having divided up Africa
at the Berlin Conference.
The colonizers instead focused on exploting
natural resources and exploitation colonialism.
==== The effect of disease environments ====
Dr. Marcella Alsan argues the prevalence of
the tsetse fly hampered early state formation
in Africa.
Because the tsetse virus was lethal to cows
and horses, communities afflicted by the insect
could not rely on the agricultural benefits
provided by livestock.
African communities were prevented from stockpiling
agricultural surplus, working the land, or
eating meat.
Because the disease environment hindered the
formation of farming communities, early African
societies resembled small hunter-gatherer
groups and not centralized states.The relative
availability of livestock animals enabled
European societies to form centralized institutions,
develop advanced technologies, and create
an agricultural network.
They could rely on their livestock to reduce
the need for manual labor.
Livestock also diminished the comparative
advantage of owning slaves.
African societies relied on the use of rival
tribesman as slave labor where the fly was
prevalent, which impeded long-term societal
cooperation.Alsan argues that her findings
support the view of Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley
Engerman that factor endowments shape state
institutions.
=== Llamas, chuño and the Inca Empire ===
Carl Troll has argued that the development
of the Inca state in the central Andes was
aided by conditions that allow for the elaboration
of the staple food chuño.
Chuño, which can be stored for long times,
is made of potato dried at freezing temperatures
that are common at nighttime in the southern
Peruvian highlands.
Contradicting the link between the Inca state
and dried potato is that other crops such
as maize can also be preserved with only sun.
Troll also argued that llamas, the Incas'
pack animal, can be found in their largest
numbers in this very same region.
It is worth considering that the maximum extent
of the Inca Empire coincided with the greatest
distribution of alpacas and llamas.
As a third point Troll pointed out irrigation
technology as advantageous to the Inca state-building.
While Troll theorized environmental influences
on the Inca Empire, he opposed environmental
determinism, arguing that culture lay at the
core of the Inca civilization.
== Effects of geography on political regimes
==
Numerous scholars have argued that geographic
and environmental factors affect the types
of political regime that societies develop,
and shape paths towards democracy versus dictatorship.
=== The disease environment ===
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A.
Robinson have achieved notoriety for demonstrating
that diseases and terrain have helped shape
tendencies towards democracy versus dictatorship,
and through these economic growth and development.
In their book Why Nations Fail, as well as
a paper titled The Colonial Origins of Comparative
Development: An Empirical Investigation, the
authors show that the colonial disease environment
shaped the tendency for Europeans to settle
the territory or not, and whether they developed
systems of agriculture and labor markets that
were free and egalitarian versus exploitative
and unequal.
These choices of political and economic institutions,
they argue, shaped tendencies to democracy
or dictatorship over the following centuries.
=== Factor endowments ===
In order to understand the impact and creation
of institutions during early state formation,
economic historians Stanley Engerman and Kenneth
Sokoloff examined the economic development
of the Americas during colonization.
They found that the beginnings of the success
or failure of American colonies were based
on the specific factor endowments available
to each colony.
These endowments included the climate, soil
profitability, crop potential, and even native
population density.
Institutions formed to take advantage of these
factor endowments.
Those that were most successful developed
an ability to change and adapt to new circumstances
over time.
For example, the development of economic institutions,
such as plantations, was caused by the need
for a large property and labor force to harvest
sugar and tobacco, while smallholder farms
thrived in areas where scale economies were
absent.
Though initially profitable, plantation colonies
also suffered from large dependent populations
over time as slaves and natives were given
few rights, limiting the population available
to drive future economic progress and technological
development.Factor endowments also influenced
political institutions.
This is demonstrated by the plantation owning
elite using their power to secure long lasting
government institutions and pass legislation
that lead to the persistence of inequality
society.
Engerman and Sokoloff found smallholder economies
to be more equitable since they discouraged
an elite class from forming, and distributed
political power democratically to most land-owning
males.
These differences in political institutions
were also highly influential in the development
of schools, as more equitable societies demanded
an educated population to make political decisions.
Over time these institutional advantages had
exponential effects, as colonies with educated
and free populations were better suited to
take advantage of technological change during
the industrial revolution, granting country
wide participation into the booming free-market
economy.Engerman and Sokoloff conclude that
while institutions heavily influenced the
success of each colony, no individual type
of institution is the source of economic and
state growth.
Other variables such as factor endowments,
technologies, and the creation of property
rights are just as crucial in societal development.
To encourage state success an institution
must be adaptable and suited to find the most
economical source of growth.
The authors also argue that while not the
only means for success, institutional development
has long lasting-economic and social effects
on the state.Other prominent scholars contest
the extent to which factor endowments determine
economic and political institutions.American
economists William Easterly and Ross Levine
argue that economic development does not solely
depend on geographic endowments—like temperate
climates, disease-resistant climates, or soil
favorable to cash crops.
They stress that there is no evidence that
geographic endowments influence country incomes
other than through institutions.
They observe that states like Burundi are
poor—despite favorable environmental conditions
like abundant rainfall and fertile soil—because
of the damage wrought by colonialism.
Other states like Canada with fewer endowments
are more stable and have higher per capita
incomes.Easterly and Levine further observe
that studies of how the environment directly
influences land and labor were tarred by racist
theories of underdevelopment, but that does
not mean that such theories can be automatically
discredited.
They argue that Diamond correctly stresses
the importance of germs and crops in the very
long-run of societal technological development.
They find that regression results support
the findings of Jared Diamond and David Landes
that factor endowments influence GDP per capita.
However, Easterly and Levine's findings most
support the view that long-lasting institutions
most shape economic development outcomes.
Relevant institutions include private property
rights and the rule of law.Jeffrey B. Nugent
and James A. Robinson similarly challenge
scholars like Barrington Moore who hold that
certain factor endowments and agricultural
preconditions necessarily lead to particular
political and economic organizations.
Nugent and Robinson show that coffee economies
in South America pursued radically different
paths of political and economic development
during the nineteenth century.Some coffee
states, like Costa Rica and Colombia, passed
laws like the Homestead Act of 1862.
They favored smallholders, held elections,
maintained small militaries, and fought fewer
wars.
Smallholder arrangements prompted widespread
government investment in education.
Other states like El Salvador and Guatemala
produced coffee on plantations, where individuals
were more disenfranchised.
Whether a state became a smallholder or plantation
state depended not on factor endowments but
on norms established under colonialism—namely,
legal statues determining access to land,
the background of the governing elites, and
the degree of permitted political competition.
Nugent and Robinson thereby conclude that
factor endowments alone do not determine economic
or political institutions.
== Direct effects of geography on economic
development ==
=== 
Effects of terrain on trade and productivity
===
Historians have also noted population densities
seem to concentrate on coastlines and that
states with large coasts benefit from higher
average incomes compared to those in landlocked
countries.
Coastal living has proven advantageous for
centuries as civilizations relied on the coastline
and waterways for trade, irrigation, and as
a food source.
Conversely, countries without coastlines or
navigable waterways are often less urbanized
and have less growth potential due to the
slow movement of knowledge capital, technological
advances, and people.
They also have to rely on costly and time
consuming over-land trade, which usually results
in lack of access to regional and international
markets, further hindering growth.
Additionally, interior locations tend to have
both lower population densities and labor-productivity
levels.
However, factors including fertile soil, nearby
rivers, and ecological systems suited for
rice or wheat cultivation can give way to
dense inland populations.Nathan Nunn and Diego
Puga note that though rugged terrain usually
makes farming difficult, prevents travel,
and limits societal growth, early African
states used harsh terrain to their advantage.
The authors used a terrain ruggedness index
to quantify topographic heterogeneity across
several regions of Africa, while simultaneously
controlling for variables such as diamond
availability and soil fertility.
The results suggest that historically, ruggedness
is strongly correlated with decreased income
levels across the globe and has negatively
impacted state growth over time.
They note that harsh terrain limited the flow
of trade goods and decreased crop availability,
while isolating communities from developing
knowledge capital.
However, the study also demonstrated that
the terrain had positive effects on some African
communities by protecting them from the slave
trade.
Communities that were located in areas with
rugged features could successfully hide from
slave traders and protect their homes from
being destroyed.
The study found that in these areas rugged
topography produced long-term economic benefits
and aided post-colonial state formation.
=== Effects of climate on productivity ===
The impact that climate and water navigability
have on economic growth and GDP per capita
was studied by notable scholars including
Paul Krugman, Jared Diamond, and Jeffrey Sachs.
By using variables to measure environmental
determinism, such as climate, land composition,
latitude, and the presence of infectious disease,
they account for trends in worldwide economic
development on local, regional and global
scales.
To do so, they measure economic growth with
GDP per capita adjusted to purchasing power
parity (PPP), while also taking into consideration
population density and labor productivity.Economic
historians have found that societies in the
Northern Hemisphere experience higher standards
of living, and that as latitude increases
north or south from the equator, levels of
real GDP per capita also increases.
Climate is closely correlated with agricultural
production since without ideal weather conditions,
agriculture alone will not produce the surplus
supply needed to build and maintain economies.
Locations with hot tropical climates often
suffer underdevelopment due to low fertility
of soils, excessive plant transpiration, ecological
conditions favoring infectious diseases, and
unreliable water supply.
These factors can cause tropical zones to
suffer a 30% to 50% decrease in productivity
relative to temperate climate zones.
Tropical infectious diseases that thrive in
hot and moist equatorial climates cause thousands
of deaths each year.
They are also an economic drain on society
due to high medical costs, and the unwillingness
of foreign capital to invest in a sickly state.
Because infectious diseases like malaria often
need a warm ecology for growth, states in
the mid to high latitudes are naturally protected
from the devastating effects of disease.
=== Climatic determinism and colonization
===
Climatic determinism, otherwise referred to
as the equatorial paradox, is an aspect of
economic geography.
According to this theory, about 70% of a country's
economic development can be predicted by the
distance between that country and the equator,
and that the further from the equator a country
is located, the more developed it tends to
be.
The theory is the central argument of Philip
M. Parker's Physioeconomics: The Basis for
Long-Run Economic Growth, in which he argues
that since humans originated as tropical mammals,
those who relocated to colder climates attempt
to restore their physiological homeostasis
through wealth-creation.
This act includes producing more food, better
housing, heating, warm clothes, etc.
Conversely, humans that remained in warmer
climates are more physiologically comfortable
simply due to temperature, and so have less
incentive to work to increase their comfort
levels.
Therefore, according to Parker GDP is a direct
product of the natural compensation of humans
to their climate.Political geographers have
used climatic determinism ideology to attempt
to predict and rationalize the history of
civilization, as well as to explain existing
or perceived social and cultural divides between
peoples.
Some argue that one of the first attempts
geographers made to define the development
of human geography across the globe was to
relate a country's climate to human development.
Using this ideology, many geographers believed
they were able "to explain and predict the
progress of human societies".
This led to warmer climate zones being "seen
as producing less civilized, more degenerate
peoples, in need of salvation by western colonial
powers."Ellsworth Huntington also travelled
continental Europe in hopes of better understanding
the connection between climate and state success,
publishing his findings in The Pulse of Asia,
and further elaborating in Civilization and
Climate.
Like the political geographers, a crucial
component of his work was the belief that
the climate of North-western Europe was ideal,
with areas further north being too cold, and
areas further south being too hot, resulting
in lazy, laid-back populations.
These ideas were powerful connections to colonialism,
and may have played a role in the creation
of the 'other' and the literature that many
used to justify taking advantage of less advanced
nations.
Huntington also argued that climate can lead
to the demise of even advanced civilizations
through drought, food insecurity, and damages
to economic production.
== See also
