“naturally” conquers and absorbs weaker neighbors. Kjellen’s thinking was deeply
influenced by the work of Friedrich Ratzel, a German Social Darwinist, who
developed a life-cycle theory of the political state. Such theories were of course
used to justify the expansionistic, aggressive foreign policies that underlay
Europeanimperialism, and rested on the notion that some states or cultures were
“inferior” due to the natural environment that surrounded them; therefore, their
conquest by stronger states was simply part of a “natural” process. By the early
20th century the theory of environmental determinism had acquired overtly racist
and chauvinistic elements, a trend that would continue until World War II.
One of Freidrich Ratzel’s students in the late 1800s was a remarkable young
American woman named Ellen Churchill Semple. Probably more than any other
individual, Semple was responsible for bringing Ratzel’s ideas regarding the life
cycle of states and the influence of geography on civilization to the American geo-
graphical community. Semple taught at both the University of Chicago and Clark
University, and her writings shaped geographical discourse in the United States
for several decades. Many of her contemporaries were already examining the con-
cept of “geographic influence” on human activity and history, and Semple’s work
provided significant momentum to this effort. One of Semple’s more controversial
positions held that religion is an outgrowth of natural forces and phenomena, a
notion that had its origins in the philosophy of both Montesquieu and the French
scholar Ernest Renan. Other American geographers took environmental determin-
ism considerably further, most notably Ellsworth Huntington, a well-known
scholar at Yale University who published numerous articles and books on the sub-
ject. Huntington’s bookClimate and Civilizationwas read not only by academics
but also by the general public, and he possibly did more to popularize the concept
of determinism than any other American scholar. By the 1920s the “scientific”
basis of environmental determinism waswidely accepted by many in the United
States. At about the same time, in Germany ideas associated with environmental
determinism emerged in the new field ofGeopolitik, or geopolitics. The main pro-
ponent of this new approach was Karl Haushofer, a professor at the University of
Munich. A German nationalist, Haushofer’s publications and lectures may have
reinforced the racial and ultranationalist views of some of the leaders of the
National Socialist (Nazi) Party. Rudolf Hess, one of Adolf Hitler’s close associates,
studied under Haushofer. Moreover, thefundamentals of Geopolitik were well
known to many who passed through the halls of the University of Munich in the
1920s and 1930s.
By the 1930s and 1940s philosophical responses to environmental determinism
had begun to appear in some academic circles on both sides of the Atlantic. In the
United States, the influence of Carl Sauer (see sidebar) and the Berkeley School
of geographers offered a counterview to the determinists. While acknowledging116 Environmental Determinism