The Baron de Montesquieu: Toward a Geography of Political Culture

Abstract

Montesquieu incorporates what would now be understood as political science and ecology into his eighteenth-century sociological studies. He concluded that sociopolitical systems were outgrowths of ecological conditions, and so cannot be unthinkingly transplanted from locale to locale. Already extant, there are evolutionarily informed studies of Montesquieu’s thesis using variables such as group-mean intelligence, which validates the relation between ecology and the development of monarchies, republics, and despotisms. However, this fourteenth chapter shows that this is but a part of a larger process. Human populations respond to ecological conditions through changes in mean intelligence, but also through changes in other life history traits. Consequently, it is inter-population life history means that were obliquely observed by Montesquieu to give rise to sociopolitical differences.