One school of geographic thought in the 19^th and 20^th centuries was environmental determinism, and major developers of this theory were David Livingstone, Ellen Semple, Ellsworth Huntington, and Griffith Taylor. Each of these figures contributed a new angle to environmental determinism, but they all centered around the core concept of the environment directly influencing humans and human culture. Many of these figures were influenced by Darwinian theories, and ideas from Ratzel and geomorphology were also prevalent.

Racism and Environmental Determinism

The foundation for environmental determinism was set in the 19^th century by David Livingstone. Livingstone saw the environment as having a direct effect on personality traits and motivations of people. For example, he suggested that tropical areas could only produce lazy people because the warm climate and widespread vegetation constantly provided food and resources, thereby not requiring the inhabitants to work very hard for anything. Livingstone further concluded that the natural laziness of people in the tropics was what caused the people to be easily enslaved. Therefore, tropical peoples’ climate was ultimately at fault for causing those people to be enslaved.

This is just one example of how environmental determinism was used to justify certain practices of people in power along with trying to rationalize unequal treatment of humans. According to many environmental determinists, some humans were actually less evolved due to their environment, and therefore the people of these climates could expect to be enslaved, have their resources taken, not develop complex cultures or civilizations, etc.   

Huntingdon and Griffith suggested similar veins of thought as Livingstone. Huntingdon sought to understand the effects of climate on people, and he believed that environmental stagnation halted the evolution of that environment’s inhabitants.

Africa, a commonly used example by environmental determinists, was thought to have undergone environmental stagnation, resulting in the stalled evolution of people in Africa. Taylor posited that African people were less evolved and were more closely related to neanderthal humans that other races.

Taylor developed an evolutionary cores theory for Australia in which the most evolved humans were said to be at the center and were surrounded by subsequent rings of less evolved humans. Semple was more mindful of racial implications, but she suggested that race was not linked as much to heredity factors as it was to environmental ones.

Ellen Semple

Semple’s ideas of environmental determinism were concentrated into four categories, and they all dealt with how the physical environment worked to condition human life.

First, the climate directly affected the physical characteristics of humans, such as skin, eye, and hair color. Second, a peoples’ culture was affected due to the influence of the environment on a culture’s perceptions and beliefs, such as the conceptualization of heaven or hell. Third, there were socioeconomic effects, such as abundance or types of resources, that determined how advanced a society would become. Fourth, the presence of physical natural barriers, like mountains or rivers, impacted how much a society migrated, moved, or interacted with other groups of people.

Semple’s rules were guided by the separation of the world into environmental types. Each environmental type would produce and harbor a certain type of person according to Semple. The type of environment directly determined what kind of people developed and lived there. For example, mountains were said to inhibit intellectual and cultural development while river valleys promoted these. Additionally, Semple aligns with Livingstone in her suggestions that people in tropical climates were lazy and wasteful while people in more temperate environments were industrious and thrifty.

How is Environmental Determinism Used Today?

Although many environmental determinism concepts were inherently racist and did not actually represent the various cultures in an environment or region, there are still aspects of environmental determinism that are present in modern day geography and are worth considering.

Taylor, in addition to his ideas of evolved humans and the spheres of evolution, also believed that the environment should not and could not be dominated by humans. He looked at the data from the environment, like temperature and humidity, and saw clear boundaries to human development, and he suggested that the Australian government really ought to be mindful of nature’s natural limitations. Cities, he proposed, should be planned around the temperature, rainfall, soil, etc. of an environment since it would be out of human reach or too costly to try and control nature.

This line of thinking is promoted by modern environmental movements that work toward sustainability and acknowledge the limited resources and complexity of the environment while also recognizing the harsh impact humans have on the health of the environment. It is also true that humans are affected and influenced by their environment, but not to the extent suggested by environmental determinism.

Humans impact their environments and can modify them in beneficial and harmful ways, so there is really a complex human-environment relationship that flows in both directions. Environmental determinism only focused on one part of that relational flow, thereby forming an incomplete picture that has since been remedied by more comprehensive modern geographical ideas.

Want to know more?

• Livingstone, D. (1994). Climate’s moral economy: science, race and place in post-Darwinian British and American geography, in Geography and Empire (eds A. Godlewska and N. Smith), Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 132-154.
• Semple, E. C. (1911). Influences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography, Holt, New York.
• Taylor, T. G. (1951). Geography in the Twentieth Century: A Study of the Evolution, Migration, Settlement and Status of the Races of Man, Oxford University Press, Oxford.