Griffith Taylor: Visionary Environmentalist Explorer

by Carolyn Strange, Alison Bashford

Thomas Griffith Taylor (1880-1963) was a geographer, anthropologist, and world explorer. His travels took him from Captain Scott's final expedition in Antarctica to every continent on earth, in a professional life that stretched from the Boer War to the Cold War. Taylor's research ranged from microscopic analysis of fossils to the ‘races of man,' the geographic basis of global politics, while his work as a professor led him from his Cambridge education to the Universities of Chicago and Sydney, as well as Harold A. Innis' recently-founded geography department in the University of Toronto. As a scientific secularist, Taylor made it his lifelong mission to enlighten the public on humankind's relation to the environment and was an early environmentalist. His progressive views on interracial marriage, as well as his criticisms of social Darwinist doctrines, anti-Semitism, and twentieth-century nationalism caused him to be constantly embroiled in controversy. Often dismissed by his contemporary political and intellectual opponents, many subsequent scientists and thinkers have come to regard his life as prophetic. This timely, beautifully produced, and copiously illustrated biography recounts and analyses the fascinating life of a remarkably contemporary man.

283 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2008

Reviews

[Timothy Dymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long before it had climate change deniers, Australia had desert deniers. Griffith Taylor the geographer was basically run out of the country in the 1920s for pointing out that Australia's 'homoclime' (that part of the Earth with which it geographically has the most in common) was not North America, but North Africa.

There was a huge amount of ideological investment by official Australia in the idea that this continent was the southern hemisphere's 'New World'. Therefore Australia must have the equilavent of fertile prarielands of North America where we actually had arid landscapes with limited soil fertility. You can find an echo of that New World of the South assumption in the belief we can turn northern Australia into the 'food bowl of Asia' if we just try really, really hard enough.

Taylor pointed out that settled white Australia was always going to hug the narrow strips of temperate coastline. By doing so he knocked away a central support for the argument to settle Australia in the first place. Hence the fury of those who rejected his work.

This biography has a readable, though somewhat pedestrian style. It is a biography of an academic so, aside from Taylor's trips to Antartica with Scott, a lot of the 'drama' revolves around academic appointments and publications - if you like that sort of thing.

As is the way of things, Taylor didn't see the homoclime controversy as his major intellectual endeavour. His life work was a study of how the environment affected the evolution of superior and inferior races. Paradoxically his racism actually made him an opponent of the White Australia Policy, because he concluded that the most 'superior' race on Earth were Asians. Therefore the White British race would benefit from 'mixing' with the local superiors. Naturally this was another reason that he was run out of the country. But it goes to show that you can't predict where certain ideas will lead people.