On the generalization of our tropical, lazy nature:
Germanness, Civilization, and Slavery: Southern Brazil as German Colonial Space (1819-1888)
"The idea that tropical environments produced indolence and degeneration has a long history. Scholars of European thought regarding the connection between climate and behavior refer to the European paradigm of understanding the tropics as “tropicality.” David Arnold defines tropicality as “a belief in the intrinsic ‘inferiority’ of tropical as opposed to temperate environments and hence in the primitivism of the social and cultural systems to which the tropics gave rise.”[43] Beginning in the ancient world and continuing well into the modern age, Europeans have seen the tropics as a zone of “otherness.”[44] Additionally, Europeans have long asserted that the environment impacted (to varying extents) human behavior, including not only physical development, but mental and moral as well.[45]"
"Two basic tropes existed, often simultaneously, in the European vision of the tropics in relation to its impact on work ethic. The first was that of the tropics as a paradise of abundance, in fact, overabundance that rendered residents lazy. The other was that of the tropics as an oppressively hot and humid region, the effects of both also led to indolence."
"Regarding the image of the tropics as abundant to a demoralizing point, this discourse existed since the discovery of the New World, but Philip Curtain writes that by the eighteenth century, the “full-fledged myth of tropical exuberance” was common in Europe.[46] The basic premise of this notion was that since the tropical environment produced food so easily, residents did not have work to survive and this rendered them indolent.[47]"
"For example, John Crawfurd was surgeon, Fellow of the Royal Society, and leading member of the Ethnological Society of London. He lived in Southeast Asia for a time, and in 1820, he published his three volume History of the Indian Archipelago. In it, he asserts that peoples living in the tropics are marked by weakness and despotism. “The cause of this phenomenon is in good measure... the softness and fruitfulness of the climate, and the consequent facility of living with little exertion.” Able to survive without working, tropical peoples lack “habits of hardihood, enterprise, and independence” that is necessary for true freedom and civilization.[48] Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist and biologist who spent time in both Brazil and the Malay Archipelago. In discussing the eastern region of that archipelago, Wallace concluded that the fecundity of the area had an adverse effect on the local peoples: “This excessive cheapness of food is... a curse rather than a blessing. It leads to great laziness... The habit of industry not being acquired by stern necessity, all labour is distasteful.” Wallace theorizes that if the whole planet was as verdant as the tropics, “the human race might have remained for a longer period in the low state of civilization” that he finds among natives in the eastern archipelago.[49]"
"In the case of German discussions of alleged Portuguese-Brazilian laziness, authors generally did not assert a connection between abundance and laziness. For example, G.H. von Langsdorf calls the assumption that the natural abundance of Brazil meant that no one worked “very hasty in the least.”[50] In fact, many Germanophone authors stressed how hard settlers had to work to succeed there.[51]"
"The second trope concerning the tropics and laziness related to climate, wherein heat and humidity deleteriously impacted people, and Europeans especially. The relation between temperature and moral/physical development has a long history in European thought. Sixteenth-century thinker Jean Bodin argued that heat produced drunkenness and lust in Europeans, although hotter regions tended to yield better philosophers, since the heat cultivated a stronger sense for inward thinking. According to Bodin, colder climates help spur people to external forms of work, such as the crafts and the arts.[52] In the seventeenth century, French poet Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas described the Garden of Eden as a temperate place, while in the eighteenth century, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle argued that extremes of heat and cold were not conducive to scientific thinking. Many Europeans thinkers saw heat as detrimental to mental and moral development. Trader and traveller Sir John Chardin asserted that hot climates slowed people’s thinking, and Scottish physician John Arbuthnot argued that constant heat produced laziness due to a lack of expansion and contraction of “Fibres” (sic) that greater variations in temperature produced.[53]"
"In 1748, Scottish philosopher David Hume wrote that those living in the extreme cold and heat were “inferior to the rest of the species, and are incapable of all the higher attainments of the human mind.” However, while he believed that people in the coldest climates were crippled by “poverty and misery” brought on by their struggles surviving in the harsh environment, indolence was the weakness of those from warmer climates. Hume argued that while there were many examples of early intellectual contributions from the warmer regions of Southern Europe, it was Northern European countries where recent advances occurred, while thinkers in the south grew less productive.[54]"
"In 1748’s The Spirit of the Laws, Baron de Montesquieu asserted that due in part to the positive effects of cold on blood flow, cold climates produced more energetic people, while heat robbed residents of warmer regions of their initiative and rendered them lazy. He also argued that people from colder regions were braver and less prone to cunning. He related those from warmer areas to old men, calling them “timorous” and lacking the courage that marked northerners. Furthermore, warmer regions breed a strong love of pleasure that is lacking in the coldest areas and well-balanced in temperate zones. This imbalance fueled a passion that dominated southerners, producing an immorality that did not plague those in the north: “If we travel towards the North, we meet with people who have few vices... If we draw near the South, we fancy ourselves entirely removed from the verge of morality.”[55]"
"German thinkers, too, saw climate as shaping humanity’s development. Eberhardt August Wilhelm von Zimmermann, a zoologist and geographer best known for his three volume Geographical History of Man and General Diffused Quadrupeds, asserted that climate was central to the development of the races, although he saw environmental influence as malleable and temporary. In the first volume of the Geographical History, compared the racial character of Europeans and Africans, including those of African descent living in the United States. He called White Europeans “actually comparatively wiser and more active” than Blacks, but this was “a consequence of climate” and not permanent. In fact, he argued that if a group of Senegalese Africans were relocated to a cold climate, such as Denmark, and allowed to live on their own without mixing with the native Europeans, the Africans would, after some time, become “Nordic white,” by which he meant not only in terms of their appearance, but also their mental capacities.[56] Hence, in Zimmermann’s racial system, climate was the determining factor, and hotter climates bred a slowness of mind and activity."
"Christophe Meiners also believed that climate made people mentally and physically weak. Meiners was a historian and philosopher who believed was a vocal defender of polygyny, or the notion that different races were actually wholly different species. While in the minority of German philosophers by supporting polygyny, Meiners was nevertheless highly influential.[57] In fact, John Zammito argues that Immanuel Kant and Johann Blumenbach first became engaged with the question of race so as to counter Meiners.[58]"
"Regarding climate’s effect on people, Meiners believed it was central to the physical and mental development of the races. In his Outline of the History of Humanity, Meiners wrote that the “strongest men and nations only... live in the mildest climates.”[59] He argued that due in part to the effect of climate, the Caucasians possessed “not only greater strength of body, but also of mind,” and that both of these traits were due in no small part to the cooler climate in which Caucasians developed. Meiners also argued that warmer environments had a deleterious effect on peoples, writing that “even the noblest of human natures are inevitably corrupted and degraded in certain areas and climates,” of which he cited Africa, Southeast Asia, most of India, and assorted regions of South America.[60]"
"In their discussions of Portuguese-Brazilians and their alleged laziness, some German writers did assert a climatic explanation. J. Friedrich von Weech wrote that climate, combined with a cavalier attitude toward religion, “seems to awaken too soon some natural instinct which was supposed to lie dormant until a person is developed fully,” and this leads very young Brazilians to become sexually active. This, in turn, leads to the loss of vitality and energy among young Brazilian men: “the decrepit young figures, the lack of the bold fire that is normally so beautiful in the youth, is only too clearly visible on the pale and lifeless faces of the urban youth.” Having lost their energy through this “early enervation,” young Brazilians turn to even greater debauchery, and in doing so, risk the future of their country.[61]"
"Thomas Davatz also connected Brazilians’ immorality and indolence to the effects of climate. Davatz was selected by the Swiss government to investigate alleged mistreatment of Swiss settlers in the sharecropping system in São Paulo. He penned a scathing report that accused Portuguese-Brazilian planters of a host of abuses, prompting further investigations in Brazil and outrage in the European German press.[62]"
"Regarding the impact of climate on Brazilians, Davatz writes that the Brazilians are unable to control their passions, often leading not only to fights, but even murder. Furthermore, Brazilians are marked by a love of idleness. Davatz relates all of this to heat and humidity, writing that “[t]hose vices... are promoted throughout the Brazilian’s life by the luxuriance of the tropical climate.”[63] Like Weech, Davatz argues that the heat drove Brazilians, and the young especially, to succumb to their base sexual desires, leading to a loss of vitality and adolescents marrying too early. However, in the subtropical region of southern Brazil, Davatz argues, there are many people who live to an exceptionally old age: “People of more than 100 years should be no great rarity, indeed some of these will live to 120-130 years of age.”[64] Davatz hence makes a distinction between the hotter climates of northern Brazil and the cooler region of southern Brazil."
"Beyond relating climate to Portuguese-Brazilian indolence, Germanophone authors also expressed concern regarding the impact of the climate on Germans settling in the country. Carl Schlichthorst, a German who served as a mercenary in the Brazilian army between 1820 and 1822, in part blames climatic effects for the laziness of nativeborn Brazilians.[65] Still, he writes that the “person born in the southern lands has many and great faults,” but that Brazilians balance such faults, including a tendency to lie and a general laziness, with their friendly nature and tendency to avoid over-drinking. However, the hot climate affects the Germans, and Northern Europeans in general, terribly: “almost all northerners who live in hot climates do not bear the particular virtue of their people, they merge in a very short time with the vices of the natives and their national faults.” German settlers bear none of the loyalty that Schlichthorst sees as marking European-Germans, instead turning to indolence and drunkenness.[66]"
"Some Germanophone writers believed that Germans could not work in tropical heat. J. Friedrich von Weech argued that slavery was a necessity in tropical environments. According to Weech, Europeans are unsuited to the much of the climate in Brazil, making intensive farming impossible for them: “it as erroneous view of many learned men, that Europeans, in the hot climate of the tropics for the duration of their stay, could perform the same work previously done by the Negro.” Weech argues that based on his own experience with Europeans in Brazil, even the hardest working settlers lose their vitality within two years, reducing them subsistence farming.[67] In his entry “Regarding Emigration” in 1847’s Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, Robert von Mohl echoed Weech’s opinion that Europeans, and Germans in particular, could not work in the tropical heat. Mohl writes that “there can be no doubt that tropical countries are not good for Europeans, especially for Germans. Such climatic conditions do not allow members of the Caucasian tribe to work outdoors, and detrimental to their health, and nearly compel slave-holding.”[68]"
