2025-04-05
48 分钟The Economist. The New World was, in short, too cold and wet.
Writing in the late 18th century, Comte de Buffon,
a leading French scientist, explained that America's frigid yet humid climate weakened life there.
Animals were smaller and dogs stopped barking.
This was probably based on weather reports from the French territories of Quebec and Louisiana.
The theory spread.
and was applied to Native Americans.
A Prussian court scientist reported that in America, the earth, full of putrefaction,
was flooded with lizards, snakes, serpents, reptiles, and insects.
He was certain that the conquest of the new world has been the greatest of all misfortunes to befall mankind.
Blaming the climate was a scientific and a racist explanation for American inferiority.
Eventually, the theory did fade away.
Thomas Jefferson even sent a skeleton of a moose back to Europe to prove the point.
Still, some European suspicion has stuck around,
even as geopolitical relationships have waxed and waned.
But now, America's changing politics are themselves changing the politics of other countries.
I'm John Prado, and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist.
Each week, we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth.
This week, how is Donald Trump affecting the internal politics of other countries?
While 2024 was a brutal year for incumbents around the world,