Semple, Ellen Churchill

Semple, Ellen Churchill (1863-1932), American geographer best known as one of the leading exponents of environmental determinism, a school of geographical thought that was highly influential during the first three decades of the 20th century. Ultimately derived from Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, environmental determinism was based on the view that the natural environment is the main determinant of the way in which human societies develop. In other words, the social and cultural life, temperament, religion, and economic practices of people in a particular area are all the result of the influence of their physical surroundings. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Semple was educated at Vassar College, New York, receiving her Master of Arts degree in 1891. Between 1906 and her death she held posts at the University of Chicago and Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, where she played an important role in developing United States interest in geography as an academic discipline. She was also an energetic member of the American Geographical Society, delivering 16 papers between 1899 and 1931. She was awarded the Cullen Geographical Medal by the society in 1914. In 1921 she became the first woman to be elected President of the Association of American Geographers.

Semple was widely read in sociology and economics, as well as geography, and between 1891 and 1892 studied in Leipzig, Germany, under Friedrich Ratzel, considered to be the founder of environmental determinism. His ideas strongly influenced Semple’s subsequent thinking, and it was through her work that they became widely known in the English-speaking world. Her first book, American History and its Geographic Conditions (1903), was principally concerned with the geographical factors behind major national historical events such as the advance of the western frontier and the American Civil War of 1861-1865. It established Semple’s reputation and, despite an overemphasis on the impact of the physical environment, it is still regarded as a classic work of American geographical literature. In 1908 in Ohio Semple delivered an address with the statement: “Man is a product of the Earth’s surface.” This viewpoint, which typified her approach to geography, was expanded most fully in Influences of Geographic Environment (1911). This book, which records 1,000 references, drew heavily on Ratzel’s views and accordingly was subtitled On the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropogeography. In it Semple reaffirmed her view of the importance of the natural environment, which was essentially unchangeable—in contrast to “shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man”. Although she rejected the term “determinism”, preferring instead “geographical control”, she also regarded location as the “supreme geographic fact in the history of a country or people”. The book was criticized for oversimplification and the uncritical presentation of interpretations as hard facts, but it had a profound influence, particularly in North America, where determinism continued to be advocated into the early 1940s. Her arguments were less well received in Europe where geographers such as Paul Vidal de la Blache and Jean Brunhes viewed the relationship between human beings and the environment as one of interdependence and repercussion—people were both influenced by and influenced the environment around them.

Semple devoted the last 20 years of her life to researching The Geography of the Mediterranean Region: its Relation to Ancient History, published in the year before her death. Containing 2,776 references, it was intended to demonstrate the validity of her deterministic views in the context of examples taken from the Mediterranean region. However, by the early 1930s determinism was becoming less acceptable, not only because of its lack of explanatory rigour but also, in the light of events in Europe, because of the nature of some of its conclusions. Semple herself, in Influences of Geographic Environment, had characterized northern Europeans as “energetic, prudent, and serious”, in contrast to people of the Mediterranean basin who were “easygoing, improvident, except under pressing necessity”, and Africans, among whom, she said, the Mediterranean characteristics had “degenerated into grave racial faults”. Racist implications resulting from some of her followers' work were even more radical. Environmental determinism became, however, fully discredited when Nazi propaganda used its premises to justify ideas of racial superiority, as expressed in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and, in practice, in the formation of concentration camps.