Charles W. King
All historical disciplines risk falling afoul of determinism, none more than environmental history. If the environment is the major factor in historical outcomes then there is no human agency, and it is possible to determine the course of future events based solely on the environmental circumstances. In academia this is a common criticism of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, regardless of the prizes it won. The propensity to flirt with the danger of determinism does not mean that environmental history is not important to both historians and policy-makers. Like a player being dealt cards at the beginning of a hand of poker, the environment does not determine the outcome of the game but places both constraints and freedoms upon historical actors.
After the initial colonization of the Caribbean until the 20th, century European powers found it almost impossible to take colonial possessions from each other. The British famously lost thousands of men in a number of attempts to take Spanish colonies, due to tropical diseases which the newly arrived expeditionary forces had no immunity to. Napoleon’s attempt to roll back the Haitian Revolution also failed due to massive casualties caused by yellow fever and malaria contracted even before the French troops made landfall. For centuries tropical diseases killed almost three quarters of Europeans arriving in the Caribbean. The freedom of action of existing colonial possessions and populations was protected from European forces by the disease rather than cannons. However, this protection was not a guarantee of successful revolution or independence. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914 vaccines and modern medical techniques had reduced the effect of tropical diseases enough to change the balance of power in the Caribbean, but many colonial possessions remained under the rule of their original colonial masters. During the centuries of European colonization that exacerbated the geopolitical import of tropical diseases historical events were shaped by the environment, but never to the elimination of human agency.
While even hazardous environments like the Caribbean or Arabian Desert can conceal hidden assets, some environments are more obviously advantageous. One of the major factors why Europe, and Western Europe and England in particular, experienced the Industrial Revolution first, and went on to dominate the rest of the globe, is environmental. Some countries like Germany possessed plentiful and easily extractable supplies of lumber, coal, and iron. Others like Portugal and the Netherlands had population sizes and geographies that facilitated sea trade and demanded capital intensive economies. England possessed both ample resources, and a geography and population that encouraged the English to turn to trade. These assets did not dictate that England, the Low Countries, and the princes of the Holy Roman Empire would become the United Kingdom, Netherland, and Germany of today, they gave freedom of action. Scotland possessed the same advantages as England, and is credited with many of the innovations that provide the foundation for the modern world. Scotland has not been an independent country since 1707. The advantages of geography and environment must be seized by political actors and are no guarantee of success.
Environmental circumstances can provide considerable advantages, such as the plentiful access to lumber, coal, and iron in Western Europe, or disadvantages, like regular drought cycles throughout the tropics. In both cases it takes political action to make use of these advantages or turn these disadvantages into disasters. For historians the environment is an important factor in historical events, always as a part of a human narrative. Policy-makers cannot afford to ignore environmental circumstances, both historical and current, in making policy. Environmental circumstances shape societies, and awareness of the drives and perspectives of foreign powers facilitates good diplomacy and policy making. Environmental circumstances frequently shape national policy; aggressive acquisition of scarce resources, policies to compensate for changing circumstances, and the displacement of people. An accurate assessment of the current environment is essential to effective policy responses. Presuming that environment dictates history is dangerous, but ignoring the environment’s impact upon history is foolish and results in poor policy-making.
Further Reading
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World, (New York, NY: Verso: 2002).
J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).