Determinism in the mountains : the ongoing belief in the bellicosity of ‘ mountain people ’

It has long been argued that mountains have an effect on wars. While some research understands this chiefly in physical terms, other research looks at the effect that mountains have on human nature. This article will look at the two thousand year history of the term ‘mountain people.’ It will explore how the belief has emerged that living in mountainous regions changes people to the degree that it makes them more likely to engage in conflict. It will also explore how mountain people can be seen in a more positive light, but this perspective is often ignored by both popular media and conflict research. It will make the case that the foundations upon which perceptions of ‘mountain people’ are based are rather shaky and somewhat misleading for empirical conflict research.

Conflicts in mountains have increased in the last 50 years, with serious violent conflicts now almost twice as likely to occur at high altitude.
- UN FAO 2004 ... because mountain territories are often border zones between states, they are often the scene of many wars or guerrilla warfare.Thus, 80% of the world's conflicts are played out in mountain regions.
-World Mountain People Association Mountain people are often the same everywhere... Mountain people are clanny.They are closed to outsiders.They are warm and free with kith and kin but withdrawn and silent and wary with strangers.They keep their emotions to themselves, especially those of a most private nature.
-Lincoln 2002: 147 It is over fifty years since Sprout and Sprout's ground-breaking study of the relationship between environment and conflict.One of their most important arguments was that policy decisions are influenced by what they refer to as the 'psychological environment': the idea that policy may not directly be influenced by environmental factors (such as terrain, forests, roads, etc.), but by the importance policy-makers imagine those factors to have.This pscyhological environment still plays a large part in analyses of mountains and conflict today, and is accepted largely uncritically both in literature and in popular discourse.This paper will present some of the ways in which mountainous regions have been linked with conflict and argue that we need to be more careful in looking at such regions.

A brief history of mountain determinism
The idea has emerged that there is a 'mountain people'; a people living in mountainous regions which is imbued with certain qualities relating to their likelihood of engaging in conflict.Recently, the belief has developed that there is great commonality between mountain peoples all over the world; indeed, such is the effect of mountains on human beings that mountain peoples are one people -mountain people.The foundations for this argument date back to antiquity but became particularly prevelant in travelwriting of the nineteenth century.Such writing at best gives a romanticised idea of people in mountain regions; at worst, it becomes scientific racism.
For the most part, it is geographically deterministic and is based on pop psychology, stereotypes and a curious interpretation of Darwinism.Nevertheless, these romantic ideas pervade contemporary understandings of people and conflicts in mountain regions and indeed have recently come full-circle to redefine the self-identities of people living in mountainous areas.
The specific linkage between mountain people and wars also dates back to antiquity.Strabo's Geography establishes one of the central ideas that has exercised subsequent writers on the subject: that something inherent in the nature of mountains affects the human condition, and that this changed lot leads to war.This one idea remains constant through the history of geography, the creation of political geography, and the changes in the politics of geography.Positivism, anthropogeography, Darwinism, environmental determinism, scientific racism and a retreat to modern po-litical geography are all stops along the way and at all of them, the question of Sprout and Sprout's 'man-milieu' relationship remains central.

Mountaineers
The people living in mountains are referred to as 'mountaineers.' 1 Paradoxes abound in describing this 'people.'The descriptions are often contradictory and sometimes lead into scientific racism.Mountaineers have been described as: 2 Savage yet of rigid morality.Revolutionary yet conservative.Covetous yet provident.Democratic yet opposed to civilisation.
Passionately independent yet of arrested political development.Honest yet piratical.Lawless yet united.Healthy yet closely intermarried.
Many such notions can be disregarded quickly.However, many of these 1 The literature in English is uniform in its usage of the word 'mountaineer' to describe people living in mountains, thereby offering no clear distinction with those who climb them.The German literature does offer this distinction: while those who climb mountains are Bergsteigers, those who live in mountain chains are the Gebirgsv ölker, who, in cases like Switzerland, live in Gebirgsstaaten.
ideas are central to modern discourse on conflict in mountain regions.
Firmly held beliefs regarding mountain people today are often based on nineteenth century romanticism.In order to come to a better understanding of the relationship between mountains and conflict, it will be necessary to piece apart these ideas.

Mountain determinism: the frozen sheep's tongue
In the crudest form of environmental determinism, environmental factors have a direct effect on human behaviour; accordingly, humans lack agency.
The upshot of this is that human history can be explained and human future can be predicted (Sprout and Sprout 1957: 312).Some of the foundations of this determinism can be found in the Renaissance.Bodin, for instance, argues that because of their environment, mountain people3 have a naturally savage nature which cannot be easily tamed (Bodin 1583b: 155-6).Bodin, like all of us, is conditioned by his times, one aspect of which is Renaissance (or indeed Galenic) physiology.Human behaviour is determined by the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile); those in colder climes are more phlegmatic.They have a 'more vehement internal heat' giving them 'much greater strength and natural vigour' (Bodin 1583b: 146-55).This allows a contrast between, on the one hand, the proud and warlike people of the north/ mountain people, with the in-habitants of the valleys, who are ordinarly effiminate and delicate (Bodin 1583a: V, 694-5).
Montesquieu takes this line of reasoning a step further and, bizarrely, looks at a sheep's tongue under a microscope, before and after freezing it.He notices pyramids between the 'papillae' which he assumes to be the 'principle organs of taste.'When frozen, the papillae diminish and the pyramids disappear, rising and appearing again when warmed up.From this, he argues that nervous glands are less expanded in cold countries and that therefore, the people have 'very little sensibility for pleasure'; those in temperate climes have more, whereas those in hot countries have the most (Montesquieu, XIV: 2; Rousseau later came to similar conclusions in his 1781 work).Montesquieu relates his frozen sheep's tongue observation to agriculture (in warm climates, people will not bother with agriculture: XIV: 6); alcohol consumption (they drink more in the cold north, in proportion to latitude: XIV: 10); food consumption (XIV: 10); passage of laws (XIV: 14-15); plus two books spent relating climate to slavery (XV -XVI).None of the modern authors uses a frozen sheep's tongue in their research.Yet many of the authors adopt a similar level of determinism.Montesquieu's line of reasoning is included here as a reminder of how shaky the foundations of determinism can be.

Yugoslavia. Gear óid Ó Tuathail quotes ABC News:
There are countless explanations for the volatility of the 'Balkan Powderkeg.'Historians variously blame disputes over resources, ancient hatreds or meddling by Great Powers intent on keeping the region unstable.But geography is also a powerful clue: Lying south of the Danube river, the Balkans region, like Afghanistan, is composed of scarce fertile valleys, separated by high mountains that fragment the area's ethnic groups, even though many have similar languages and origins (ABC News 1998, in Ó Tuathail 2001: 797).
Here we can see that the environmental factors are being used to explain the conflict.Indeed, Ó Tuathail makes the case that Colin Powell argued 'consistently that the topography precluded effective military action by NATO ' (2001: 803).Ó Tuathail argues that it is not the mountains themselves, but people's preconceived notions of mountains which were used to create the image of the region as a powderkeg.

Different types of mountain
Hommaire de Hell was a nineteenth century travel writer who made some important observations which are often forgotten by more recent researchers.
Importantly, he argues that the physical nature of the Caucasus chain is quite different to that of the other European chains: The Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians, are accessible only by the valleys, and in these the inhabitants of the country find their subsistence, and agriculture develops its wealth.
The contrary is the case in the Caucasus.From the fortress of Anapa on the Black Sea, all along to the Caspian, the north-ern slope presents only immense inclined plains, rising in terraces to a height of 3000 or 4000 yards above the sea level.
These plains, rent on all directions by deep and narrow valleys and vertical clefts, often form real steppes, and possess on their loftiest heights rich pastures, where the inhabitants, secure from all attack, find fresh grass for their cattle in the sultriest days of summer.The valleys on the other hand are frightful abysses...This brief description may give an idea of the difficulties to be encountered by an invading army (Hommaire de Hell 1847: 297-8).
The authors also point out that '[a]mong the shortcomings of conventional geographical determinist discourse is the frequent use of the adjective 'mountainous' to describe the entire region without qualification or nuance' (Radvanyi and Muduyev 2007: 158) (1996: 163) argues the terrain was too dangerous for a presidential visit.
Again, much recent research ignores these arguments and simply regards the region as 'not mountainous.'Aron (1966) suggests that it is impossible to evaluate the effects of the environment: 'Neither isolable nor specifically determinant, the action of the geographical environment is exerted continually, without our being able to measure its limits' (Aron 1966: 188).This argument could perhaps be taken a step further: the action of the geographical environment is exerted continually, without our even knowing it.Sprout and Sprout presented their arguments on the 'psychological environment' in 1957, yet this psychological environment still continues to hold sway in discourse on mountain regions and conflict.Two thousand years ago, Strabo told us that there was something about mountains that changed human nature.Over 400 years ago, Bodin told us that mountain people are naturally savage.More recently, in 2002, Lincoln argued that mountains lead to genetic change.

Conclusion
Mountains will have effects on human behaviour.Some of these effects may relate to factors associated with conflict.Yet it is the argument of this paper that now that conflict researchers are in a position to test the relationship between environment and terrain empirically, we must do everything we can to recognise that some of the beliefs we hold dear may be built on foundations which are considerably less firm than the mountains.
) makes similar observations on the different types of