Mapping race and environment: Geography's entanglements with Aryanism

This article examines how theories of Aryanism influenced geographic theories of race and environmental influence. The argument is made that the entanglements between Aryanism and geographic theories of race provide a new site in assessing the history of geographic thought. It begins by illuminating the rise of Aryanism in colonial India. As it moved across time and space, Aryanism became a foundational element in racial science, and informed a number of disciplines, including geography. The majority of the article is devoted to exposing the influence of Aryanism in American geography from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The paper finds that the influential geographers Arnold Guyot, Nathaniel Shaler, Friedrich Ratzel, Ellen Semple, and Ellsworth Huntington were all indebted to Aryanism in the production of their theories of race and the environment.