Ellen Churchill Semple

                In “Geographical Location as a Factor of History,” and “Pirate Costs of the Mediterranean,” Semple greatly oversimplifies many differences in cultures and history by reducing them to differences in geography. Her theories are very alluring, but eventually come up short in many respects - mostly by ignoring a multitude of equally important factors besides geography. She makes many interesting points about the forces that cultures/nation states are subject to, and how they are factors of geography, but she takes them too far. She talks about how places that are off the beaten path geographically, and separated from their neighbors by (for example) seas, are guarded from “outside interference and infusion of foreign blood,” and that these “more secluded nooks… make for a temporary halt or permanent rest” where humanity is “held still and it crystallizes into a nation.” But, as far as Europe goes, there are not many places more peripheral than the British Isles, and they have had their gene pool contributed to, throughout their history, by any group of people within 500 miles that owned a boat. In addition to that they are the opposite of crystallized as a nation. There are two or three countries on each of the main islands that have been warring in one sense or another since forever, and each one of those is divided again into many different groups who see themselves as distinct from the others. The English language itself is a good example of a cultural stew. Here it is obvious how Semple ignores, to a great degree, other factors like technology (boats) and religion when explaining cultural differences. Obviously we cannot have expected Semple predict the future history of technology, but to me that is where her shortcomings are most obvious. The cultural impact that places like New York and Hollywood have through the use of communications technology has allowed the United States to project “our values” around the world. In this case technology has totally eclipsed the spatial component to cultural influence that Semple presents, and instead introduced one where material wealth and technological access takes over. She also tends to look at the world (which in these papers doesn’t really extend past places where there is a significant European history/influence) as if the motivations of the nation state are universal, as if all actors have in mind the same goals. And, she cleverly discounts any examples that don’t conform to her ideas by saying that the society in question is not “mature and historically significant” or something to that affect. If her theories were accurate and you were to impose them on a hypothetical world where all people shared one, similar geography you would expect to find one largely uniform culture. I think we can all agree that that would not be that case though.              

Semple also says in “Pirate Coasts…” that some pirating was due to impoverished hinterlands and an unfertile littoral that forced its malnourished population into piracy, but I have read about Polynesian and neighboring cultures, where according to Semple pirating should be a way of life, that stresses on the food supply were dealt with, much of the time, through exploration, population control, and cultural structures that promoted trading, not warfare.