Race and Empire

The legacies of geography's historical complicity with the racialized logic of empire are profound and have had significant impacts on the ways in which race, racism, and racialization have been approached within geography. The geographies of empire from the late 19th century through the early 20th century demanded attention to a theorization of race; however, as Britain's imperial ambitions waned, the centrality of the study of race within the discipline was displaced. Race became closely entwined with various colonial efforts, and geographers were often complicit in this process. This is not to say that the study of race ceased to be part of geographic thought, but it certainly did not hold the same place within the discipline following World War I. In understanding the history of the geographic study of race, one must understand the role that geography played in the theorization of environmental determinism and its use as a tool of empire.

While the notion of geographic determinism certainly predates modern geography—it can be found within the pages of Aristotle's Politics—the mobilization of a scientific study of the geography of race took on new dimensions during the 19th century as the imperial ambitions of Western Europe and the United States relied on the modern discipline of geography to underscore and justify the racist thinking at the heart of their geographic expansion. The cementing of the complicit relationship between geography, race, and the ambitions of empire marks a significant event in the history of the discipline. As Peet (1985) put it, “Environmental determinism was geography's entry into modern science. Determinism attempted to explain the imperial events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century capitalism in a scientific way” (p. 310). Thus, it is as a tool of imperialism, through the theorizing of the relationship between race and geography, that geography secured its place within the modern academy (Figure 1).

In fact, the history of geography and its role in carving up the globe to facilitate the domination of Western imperial powers is well documented. As Kobayashi and Peake (2000) explain,

In this way, geography provided the “scientific” underpinnings for the common notion that the world's cultures were entirely reflective of the physical environment, particularly climate. In [Page 2336]doing so, the science of geography reinforced a racialized conception of the world that established whites as the “natural” masters of the globe's diverse peoples.

Figure 1 Geography school atlas illustration from 1883 illustrating the world's hierarchy of races as asserted by European colonialists. As Europeans conquered the world, racism became a significant part of their worldview, often used to legitimize their domination of non-Western peoples.

Source: Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World (1883), reproduced in Schulten, S. (2001). The geographical imagination in America, 1880–1950 (p. 36). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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