Environmental Determinism

Environmental determinism, also termed climatic determinism or geographical determinism, refers to the proposition that physical environments shape or predispose societies towards particular cultural, economic, political, or developmental trajectories. Although widely recognised today as a contested and often problematic theory, it has exerted significant influence over centuries of intellectual history. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, scholars such as Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, and Ian Morris contributed to a revival of interest in environmental explanations through neo-environmental determinism. Modern approaches emphasise how ecological and geographic forces influence state formation, institutional development, and economic performance, without endorsing the racial assumptions embedded in earlier formulations.

Classical and Medieval Intellectual Traditions

Early expressions of environmental determinism appeared independently in several ancient civilisations. In Ancient China, Guan Zhong of the Spring and Autumn period argued that the characteristics of river systems moulded the behaviour of populations living nearby. He suggested that twisting, rapid rivers fostered societies that were uncouth, aggressive, and impulsive, whereas more stable river systems shaped more orderly communities.
Comparable ideas emerged in Ancient Greece and Rome. The physician Hippocrates advanced one of the most detailed accounts in his treatise Airs, Waters, Places. He argued that climate, diet, and local customs produced distinctive temperaments, physiques, and health profiles among different peoples. According to his interpretation, populations living in uniform climates—such as those he believed characterised parts of Asia—developed docility, political subservience, and limited martial capacity because their environment did not expose them to sudden changes or ‘mental shocks’. Europeans, by contrast, were portrayed as more resilient and warlike due to exposure to variable weather conditions, which supposedly cultivated endurance and fortitude.
Hippocrates also attempted to explain physical appearance and fertility through environmental influences. His descriptions of the Scythians exemplify this reasoning, claiming that their environment produced bodies that were soft, bloated, and infertile. He linked their lifestyles, climatic exposure, and diet to low reproductive capability, using these claims to argue that an unchanging climate could have degenerative biological effects. Harsh, barren, or highly variable climates, in contrast, were believed to produce strong, lean, hardy populations with energetic dispositions.
In the medieval Islamic world, scholars continued to develop similar associations. The Afro-Arab polymath al-Jahiz attributed variations in human and animal skin colour to soil composition, water quality, and heat. He compared black basalt in the Najd region with the dark complexion of local peoples to illustrate his argument. Ibn Khaldun likewise posited that climate, soil, and food shaped not only physical traits but social organisation, distinguishing between sedentary and nomadic lifestyles and linking customs to environmental circumstances. In his Muqaddimah (1377), Ibn Khaldun rejected hereditary racial explanations for dark skin and attributed it instead to the climate of sub-Saharan Africa. His work may have influenced European Enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, whose ideas were shaped by travel accounts including those of Jean Chardin.

Colonial-Era Interpretations and Scientific Racism

Environmental determinism became particularly influential during the age of European imperial expansion. From the eighteenth century onward, many European scholars and political figures used environmental arguments to justify colonial rule, asserting that tropical climates produced societies that were inherently ‘uncivilised’ or lacking in discipline. Such claims supported ideologies of European superiority and supposedly scientific frameworks that aligned with religious arguments about hierarchy.
By the nineteenth century, geographers and anthropologists increasingly invoked environmental determinism to legitimate racial hierarchies and the expansion of empire in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Writers including Thomas Jefferson claimed that tropical environments encouraged idleness, moral laxity, and degeneracy, while temperate climates generated industrious and rational societies. Adolf Hitler subsequently drew on such theories to advocate for the superiority of so-called Nordic populations.
These arguments sometimes incorporated the then-popular Lamarckian theory of inheritance, which proposed that characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime due to environmental pressures could be directly transmitted to offspring. Under this approach, the climate was believed not merely to influence behaviour or physiology in the present but to shape the heritable traits of entire populations. Although Lamarckian inheritance was eventually discredited by evolutionary biology, its assumptions helped reinforce deterministic and racialised thought during the colonial era.

Revival and Reformulation in the Contemporary Period

During the later twentieth century, environmental determinism regained attention in a more analytically cautious and scientifically grounded form. This neo-environmental determinist perspective shifted emphasis from racial hierarchies to the structural constraints and opportunities created by geography, ecology, and resource distribution.
Jared Diamond’s work exemplifies this reformulation. He argued that Eurasian civilisations gained advantages not through inherent superiority but through access to domesticable plants and animals, favourable latitudinal orientation that enabled the spread of crops, and geographic conditions that supported complex societies. Similarly, contemporary political scientists such as Jeffrey Herbst and historians such as Ian Morris have examined how terrain, climate, disease environments, and resource endowments influence the evolution of state structures, warfare, and institutional resilience.
This modern scholarship attempts to analyse environmental influences without endorsing determinism in its strictest sense. Rather than claiming that geography alone dictates human development, it typically presents the environment as one influential factor among many, interacting with culture, technology, and historical contingency. Crucially, it rejects the racial assumptions that underpinned earlier theories, emphasising instead the role of non-biological factors such as resource availability, navigability of terrain, and ecological shocks.

Critiques and Contemporary Perspectives

Despite its revival in modified form, environmental determinism remains subject to substantial criticism. Scholars argue that the theory historically oversimplified human behaviour, underestimated cultural agency, and served political agendas that justified exploitation, racial hierarchy, and imperial domination. Many contemporary geographers favour possibilism, which asserts that environments create opportunities and constraints but do not determine outcomes, and they emphasise the dynamic interactions between societies and their environments.
Nevertheless, the theory continues to appear in discussions of global inequality, state formation, and long-term historical development. By reframing environmental factors as structural influences rather than deterministic forces, modern research attempts to integrate geography into explanatory frameworks while avoiding the reductionism characteristic of earlier interpretations.