Today, concerns about human effects on climate are pressing. For much of human history, however, the opposite was true, and the effects of climate on people were often of greater concern. Environmental determinism – ideas that climate shapes bodies and cultures – has a long and insidious history. Determinist thinking often had utility in justifications for empire, even as imperial agents also recognised that landscapes had long been modified – even “terraformed” – to escape environmental limits. There was thus a tension between the idea that environments shaped people and the idea that people could escape climatic constraints via technology. This project focuses on Mesopotamia, tracing British, French, and German imperial activities between 1780 and 1930. Applying interdisciplinary insights from global history, history of science, and environmental humanities, the research will examine a diverse range of historical actors and debates over climate. Among broader questions, it asks: Why have determinist explanations so often appealed to scholars in explaining historical phenomena, from the fall of empires to the movement of peoples? And how do imperial cultural legacies echo today, for example, in problematic language around “climate refugees”, and in the large-scale climate engineering schemes that are increasingly being proposed?
DR. LACHLAN FLEETWOOD
CURRICULUM VITAE
Lachlan Fleetwood is a historian of science, empire, geography, and environment. He completed a PhD in history at the University of Cambridge in 2020 and subsequently held fellowships at University College Dublin and Yale University. This was followed by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at LMU Munich, where he is also a global fellow. His first book, Science on the Roof of the World: Empire and the Remaking of the Himalaya, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. He is currently researching histories of habitability, empire, environmental determinism, and terraforming in Central Asia and Mesopotamia.