Griffith Taylor and Environmental Determinism

Griffith Taylor and Environmental Determinism

This page is for use of my students in HIST 382: Canada and HIST 381: Australia & New Zealand. It explains the concept of environmental determinism and introduces its greatest exponent in Australia and Canada, the geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor.

Environmental Determinism

Simply put, an environmental determinist says, "Environment determines culture." And by "environment" the determinist means the physical environment, not social conditions. People and peoples are what they are because they have been shaped by their physical surroundings--climate, vegetation, and so on. This is an old idea that most geographers today are embarrassed about. In particular they have acknowledged the racism implicit in the origins of environmental determinism, its use to justify theories of race supriority for peoples from northern latitudes and to denigrate peoples from the tropics.

Current work in environmental history has resurrected some work by environmental determinists in order to emphasize that nature places constraints on human endeavor. The racist aspects, however, remain in disrepute.

Australia and Canada are countries with a lot of environment and not many people. Griffith Taylor was an exponent of environmental determinism in both. Between these times he also served at the University of Chicago, the center for environmental determinism in American thought early in this century.

Thomas Griffith Taylor

Taylor was born in England in 1880 and came to Australia with his family in 1893. He took his B.S from the University of Sydney and then went home for a B.A. at Cambridge, received 1909; later he would marry an English woman. During the years 1911-12 he was Senior Geologist with the British Antarctic Expedition. He returned to Australia where, among other things, he assisted with the survey of the site for the federal capital. Sydney U. awarded him a D.S. degree in 1916 and made him Associate Professor of Geography in 1920. As will be indicated below, some of his writings in Australia were controversial, and he left the country to become Senior Professor of Geography at the University of Chicago, 1929-35, and then Head of the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto, 1935-51. After retirement he returned to Australia, where he died in 1963.

The paragraph just above is based largely on the finding aid to the Papers of Thomas Griffith Taylor at the National Library of Australia. Taylor also wrote a notable autobiography entitled Journeyman Taylor.

Major Works by Taylor

Environment and Race: A Study of the Evolution, Migration, Settlement and Status of the Races of Man. London: Oxford University Press, 1927.

This the most scary of Taylor's books, where he lays out his theories of human evolution under the influence of environment. These ideas easily are turned into rationales for racism and imperialism.

In the past it has been usual to explain national progress largely in terms of military power, religious beliefs, and sagacious rulers, as witness almost any history written in the nineteenth century. It would be foolish to deny the great influence of these factors, but there is a growing school of thinkers who believe that the environment is at least of equal importance, although the study of this factor has been neglected in the past. . . . Further than this, many scientists are coming to the conclusion that it is the variation in the environment which is the most potent factor of all in influencing human evolution, whether biological or social.
We have seen that nationality and language . . . have very little bearing on the problem of physical classification, which is the final court of appeal. The most obvious of these physical criteria is the color of the skin, and for scientific purposes this should be judged on the inside of the upper arm and not from the face. . . . The logical explanation of dark skin-color seems to be that it is the result of exposure to the sun's heat. . . . With a few notable exceptions we find that there is a fairly close relation between skin-color and more important criteria like skull-proportions. . . . The most satisfactory criterion in ethnology in the writer's opinion is based on skull-measurement.
It cannot be too greatly stressed that the feeling of superiority which dominates the so-called "white" races is a growth of the last few centuries. . . . It would seem to be clear that the centre of the white races must move to the lands discovered since Pre-Columbian days.
Australia: A Study of Warm Environments and Their Effect on British Settlement. London: Methuen, 1940.

This work is a methodical and extended discussion of Australian geology, regions, settlement, and economic development, winding up with an assessment of Australia's prospects for growth. Taylor, of course, concludes that development has been shaped by environment, and growth will be seriously constrained by it. Much of Australia, he said (in opposition to the "Australia Unlimited" school of thought), was a desert.

For many years the writer was urging, at first in vain but later with some success, that Australians should recognize that there was a very obvious limit to the regions suitable for close settlement--or even for pastoral settlement. This point of view was very obnoxious to a voluble group of boosters who roundly declared that there was no desert in Australia.
In the early days of our science national progress was discussed in terms of Providence, priests, potentates and politicians, and environment was hardly considered. Yet whether the writer studies Europe, where man has reached some degree of equilibrium in settlement, or the newer land of the United States, or finally Australia and Canada, he is still fixed in his belief that Nature has largely decided the future of a country before man occupies it. . . . Nor do biological and cultural factors like race, religion and language exercise any dominant influence. Yet what we may term the three servants of Nature, King Frost, King Drought and King Coal, to a very large degree have determined how man has developed the European scene. The relation is just as clear in Australia and Canada; and although environmental control is not a popular concept in the United States, it is as potent there also. . . . The writer, then, is a determinist. He believes that the best economic programme for a country to follow has in large part been decided by Nature, and it is the geographer's duty to interpret this programme. Man is able to accelerate, slow or stop the progress of a country's development. But he should not, if he is wise, depart from the directions as indicated by the natural environment.
Canada: A Study of Cool Continental Environments and Their Effect on British and French Settlement. Mondon: Methuen, 1947.

The title indicates the point of the book (nice contrast to Australia, isn't it?), and if there be any doubt, the map on the frontispiece depicts "Future Settlement of Canada as determined by the Environment."

There are on our globe five belts of latitude, which differ so greatly that they have very different effects on man and crops. . . . we see that Canada has an important place in the second-best belt, while France (and adjacent lands) and the United States and China are in the best lands in the northern hemisphere. . . .
Most geographers adopt the general conclusions of Ellsworth Huntington that the annual isotherm for 40 degrees Fahrenheit accompanies the best mental work. This runs through the belt of close settlement which marks the southern border of Canada. . . . (It also passes through Scotland, South Sweden, Moscow, and Vladivostock.)
Some thirty years ago I published views as to the future of Australia, which so displeased the "powers that be" in Western Australia, that my book was blacklisted in the schools of that large region. Today I can safely say that Australians have adopted most of my conclusions. . . . In the case of Canada we have an even larger extent of empty land . . . but there has been little tendency on the part of those in authority to claim too many virtues for these lands. . . . Indeed, it is my experience that those in authority are wisely frowning on the rather wild statements which from time to time are made with regard to "potentialities" of the north.
The aim of education should be--much as put forth by Aristotle--to enable a man to make the best of his environment. Modern geography is precisely the best discipline to teach man that he is conditioned by his environment; that he himself is changing, however slightly, and is part of the mechanism of human evolution; and that he can only understand his own place in the scheme of things if he has a real knowledge of the relation of man to his environment.