When climate is a tool of empire

When Mississippi seceded from the Union in 1861, its Declaration of the Immediate Causes proclaimed the absolute necessity of slavery, which produced the goods necessary to the world’s commerce and civilization: “These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the Black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.” The determinist and reductionist character of such a statement represents a long-standing theme in intellectual history, and by no means only in the West. That tradition forms the theme of David Livingstone’s deeply impressive and wide-ranging study The Empire of Climate.

Livingstone takes his title from a 1748 statement by the philosopher Montesquieu that the “empire of the climate is the first, the most powerful of all empires.” Since ancient times, countless scholars had invoked climate factors to explain all manner of human qualities as they affected human health, the prosperity of particular societies, and the making of national character. Some of these linkages were simply loopy, but often—as in the case for the naturalness of enslaving Africans—they were profoundly dangerous.

What makes Livingstone’s book so significant is that he traces this history up to the present day, showing how potent such determinism remains. Arguably, belief in the “imperious law of nature” is becoming even more widespread. The more concerned we (very reasonably) become about climate threats, the more we study their likely impacts, and we naturally tend to paint them in the most alarming colors. A scholar pitching a research proposal or a trade book on climate change is exceedingly unlikely to minimize the consequences for global futures.