Frontiers of Democracy: Domingo Sarmiento and Josiah Royce on the Geography of Self-Governing Communities

It is sometimes claimed that democracy is a “Western” form of government that can only grow in certain places and under certain conditions. Indeed, in some of his works, Samuel Huntington claims that democracy and the rule of law are social ideals that are rooted in very specific European cultures and may not function well, or at all, outside of those settings. Jared Diamond, author of the popular Guns, Germs, and Steel, goes even further, suggesting that the rise of industrialized democracies had much to do with the geography and the environment in which these social ideals evolved, giving the West distinct advantages over other societies with different terrains and natural resources (see Diamond). Democracy, literally, has a limited place.

In Latin America, ideas about the relationship of environment to democracy were once quite common. Shortly after the revolutions against Spain in 1810, General Simon Bolivar penned a letter to a European correspondent in which he outlined the motives and aspirations of the Latin American independence movements. Despite his general admiration for representative forms of government, Bolivar did not believe that European or North American-style democracy was necessarily the only, or even the best, option for Latin America. Central and South America are vast territories with many different regions, topography, and climatic conditions. He argued that wise nation building requires attention to the dynamic particularities of a community’s culture, history, and race, as well as climate and geography. In some cases, representative government will work, but for other communities in Latin America, a monarchy or other authoritarian system might be best suited.

Bolivar’s environmental determinism was a perspective that continued to influence Latin American thinkers well into the nineteenth century. One of these thinkers was the Argentine writer and statesman, Domingo Sarmiento. In his famous work, Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, Sarmiento argues that the vast territory of Argentina is inhospitable to the kind of individual and social character needed for democratic self-rule. Significant alteration of nature would be required to eradicate the political despotism bred in the vast western provinces of Argentina. The role that the natural environment plays in determining the health of a community is also of concern for another North American philosopher: Josiah Royce. In several essays published at the beginning of the twentieth century, Royce reflected on the landscape and climate of California and the Pacific Northwest, and how they contributed to the development of these western states, and United States identity, in particular.

In this essay, I examine and compare Sarmiento’s and Royce’s views on how landscape, and particularly the notion of the frontier, affects the development of democratic community. Royce himself engaged in cross-cultural comparisons of frontier settlement. After a lengthy journey in 1888, Royce contrasted the United States and Australia in order to highlight the distinctiveness of the American frontier experience and how it led to the kinds of political institutions found in the United States (see Kegley 112–20). Indeed, Frank Oppenheim argues that this comparison is key to understanding Royce’s later philosophy of community (see Oppenheim). I believe that by contrasting these two accounts of frontier settlement, we are able to understand better the role of place in the flourishing of democratic community and to appreciate better the unbounded nature of democracy itself.

The Pampas as Frontier

As they sought to find ways to talk about political nation-building after the wars of independence, Latin American philosophers contemplated whether democratic self-rule could flourish in their countries. Some, like Bolivar, believed that their political options were limited because of climate and landscape. This position, environmental or climatic determinism, is the view that physical characteristics, such as the geography and weather of a region, determine the habits or psychological makeup of individuals who live in that region, which in turns influences the development of their culture and basic social institutions (see Arnold 4–5).

Sarmiento wrote Facundo in 1845 as an attempt to explain and criticize the power of Argentine dictator Jose Manuel de Rosas, who ruled from about 1829 to 1832, and...