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“The Climate of History: Four Theses”

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Science and History – All activities of mankind are a subject of study for history, and science is
not an exception. A science historian studies the evolution of a particular field of science like
mathematics, chemistry, physics, etc. A science historian is different from other historians in the
sense that he/she needs to master the subject of their study. For instance, a biology historian
needs to be well acquainted with biology, a chemistry historian should understand chemistry, and
so on. A science historian tries to understand the way a certain field of science has evolved in
the past. They base their study in historical sources, which are generally written documents:
manuscripts or prints, school handbooks, notes from classes, scientific journals and published
works from discoveries, letters between scientists and research institutions; but they can also be
material remnants like instruments used for research, maps, or objects used for outreach.

Author

Dipesh Chakrabarty is an Indian historian and leading scholar of postcolonial theory and
subaltern studies. He holds a B.Sc. Physics degree from Presidency College, University of
Calcutta, a postgraduate Diploma in management (equivalent to MBA) from the Indian Institute
of Management, Calcutta and a Ph. D. in History from the Australian National University. He is
currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian
Languages and Civilizations. He is the faculty director, University of Chicago Center in Delhi, a
faculty fellow of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory, an associate of the Department
of English, and by courtesy, a faculty member in the Law School.

Dipesh Chakrabarty is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a

consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies, and has served on
the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture. He is also an
associate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney
2018–2021. Chakrabarty is the recipient of the 2014 Toynbee Foundation Prize for his
contributions to global history. He was awarded a D. Litt. by the University of London in 2010
and an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp in 2011. He was awarded the
Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 2011. He was
elected an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006 and a fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Chakrabarty’s most recent books are One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax (2023),
The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (2021), The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global
and Planetary Histories (2018) and Some Aspects of Labour History of Bengal in the Nineteenth
Century: Two Views (2018). He is also the coeditor, along with Henning Trüper and Sanjay
Subrahmanyam, of Historical Teleologies in the Modern World (2015). He is currently working
on three books, provisionally titled The Planet and the Human: The Anthropocene as Present,

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The Historical Imagination and Its Contemporary Crisis, and The Holocene Lost?
Provincializing Europe in a Warming World. His other publications include Rethinking Working-
Class History: Bengal 1890–1940 (1989), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and
Historical Difference (2000), Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern
Studies (2002), and The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (2015).
Chakrabarty is a regular contributor to Bengali newspapers and journals published from Calcutta.

Edited Volumes

• Cosmopolitanism (2002), editor with Carol Breckenridge, Sheldon Pollock, and Homi K.
Bhabha
• From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition (2007), editor
with Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori
• Historical Teleologies in the Modern World (2015), editor with Henning Trüper and
Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Selected Articles

• “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?”
Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 1-26.
• “The Death of History? Historical Consciousness and the Culture of Late Capitalism.”
Public Culture 4.2 (Spring 1992): 47-65.
• “Universalism and Belonging in the Logic of Capital.” Public Culture 12.3 (Fall 2000):
653-678.
• “Where Is the Now?” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004): 458-462.
• “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35.2 (Winter 2009): 197–222.
• “Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change.” New Literary History 43.1
(Winter 2012): 1-18.
• “Climate and Capital: On Conjoined Histories.” Critical Inquiry 41.1 (Autumn 2014): 1–
23.
• “Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable.” New
Literary History 47.2-3 (Spring and Summer 2016): 377-397.

The essay, “The Climate of History: Four Theses” has become a primary text for understanding
the problematic nature of the Anthropocene as a cultural category. Dipesh Chakrabarty attempts
to examine the idea of the Anthropocene as the dawn of a new geological period dominated by
human activities within the context of history and philosophy, raising fundamental questions
about how we think historically in an era when human and geological timescales are colliding.

The Essay

“The Climate of History: Four Theses” appeared in Critical Inquiry, Winter 2009, Volume 35,
Issue 2. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s engagement with the idea of the concept of the anthropocene has
become a key starting point for rethinking the humanities in the era of anthropogenic climate
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change. His work raises some fundamental questions for the way in which we go about historical
research in the present, and, even more profoundly, for the mode in which we think historically
at all. The essay/article published in 2009 in Critical Inquiry “The Climate of History: Four
Theses”, has been translated into various languages and circulated widely, and it projects the
emergence of humanity as a geological agent (i.e. as a species with the capacity to transform, and
even to destroy, its own conditions of existence). It also tries to demonstrate the distinction
between human and natural histories. The article has five parts including the introduction and
four theses.

Dipesh Chakrabarty begins his essay by explaining the different kinds of responses from
individuals, groups and governments regarding the planetary crisis, that is, the climate change or
global warming. He says that regarding this issue, a variety of responses always occur which
includes the denial of the fact, a kind of disconnect, sometimes a feel of indifference while others
take it as a challenge through the spirit of engagement and activism. Chakrabarty then writes
about the book, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman in which he suggests a thought
experiment (thinking through its consequences). According to Weisman’s experiment, he invites
the people to imagine a “world without us” and he says that such a thought would create a
present which will disconnect the future from the past. The subject History actually exists by a
certain continuity of human experience, that is, by establishing a connection between past,
present and future but the modern context of anthropocene will break this continuity.

Dipesh Chakrabarty wants to “insert” ourselves into the future “without us” in order to visualize
such a world or experience the reality of such a thing. Thus, we are forced to leave the historical
practices of visualizing times such as past and present inaccessible to us and are forced to
experience a “deep contradiction and confusion”. Weisman says that the present condition has
given ample concerns about our future since it has become destructive.

In the next part, Dipesh tries to discuss the climate change along with that of history. He writes
about a contemporary concern – global warming due to excessive accumulation of greenhouse
gases produced mainly due to “burning of fossil fuel and the industrialized use of animal stock
by human beings” (198). He says that beyond the scientific proportions, there can be changes
even in human history too with the concept of anthropocene happening around. The renowned
historian, C.A. Bayly calls it as “the birth of the modern world”.

In this essay, Dipesh presents the “responses to the contemporary crisis from a historian’s point
of view” (198). He tries to explain his role as a historian in connection with the theme of climate
change and he finds himself as a practicing historian with a strong interest in the nature of
history as a form of knowledge. According to Dipesh, scientific studies of global warming began
from the discoveries of the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in the 1890s but more serious
discussions regarding the concept came only in the 1980s and 1990s. Certain critics combine this

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era along with the beginning of ‘globalization’ too which has directly or indirectly enraged the
context. The whole issue became a public concern in the 2000s. In 1988, James Hansen, the
director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, warned the people by saying that, “It’s
time to stop waffling… and say greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate”. George
Bush, the President of US at that time said that he was going to fight this plague with the “White
House effect” but nothing really happened. People all over the world gradually began to
understand the situation with various signs of crisis such as “the drought in Australia, frequent
cyclones and brush fires, crop failures in many parts of the world, the melting of Himalayan and
other mountain glaciers and of the polar ice caps and the increasing acidity of the seas and the
damage to the food chain” (199). The rapid destruction of many species and the increase of
population globally are the other factors responsible for the crisis.

Dipesh Chakrabarty introduces two books written by Giovanni Arrighi – The Long Twentieth
Century (1994) and Adam Smith in Beijing (2007) which tries to seek to understand the
implications of the economic rise of China. In the first book, the author has discussed the chaos
created by capitalist economies or how capitalism has burned up humanity while in the second,
he is more concerned about the “ecological limits to Capitalism” (200). Chakrabarty says that
Arrighi has travelled or understood a lot between two books, that is from globalization to global
warming which leads us to an important question – “How do we bring them (globalization and
global warming) together in our understanding of the world?”

Dipesh says that according to many studies, “there is a large measure of truth to anthropogenic
(humans causing environmental pollution) theories of climate change” (200). According to
Naomi Oreskes, an American historian of science, she could not even find a single paper with the
thought of humans being responsible for climate change though she examined around 928 papers
on global warming – “over the reality of human-induced climate change” (201). Dipesh
concludes his introduction by saying that his statements which follow are based on the
proposition that “the present crisis of climate change is man-made” and he tries to present his
thoughts or “propositions” (201) in the form of four theses.

Thesis I: Anthropogenic Explanations of Climate Change Spell the Collapse of the Age-old
Humanist Distinction between Natural History and Human History

Basic idea: Climate change responsible for the collapse of the distinction between Natural
History and Human History

Philosophers and students right from early days have tried to separate human history (history of
the world) or the story of human affairs from that of natural history (domain of inquiry involving
organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment). Philosophers like Thomas
Hobbes and Giambattista Vico believed that since the humans have created political and civil
institutions, they have a proper knowledge regarding them but are totally unaware of nature and
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its wonders since it is the creation of God. Benedetto Croce, an Italian philosopher and historian
says that “we can only understand what we can make”. Even Marx had the influence of Vico as
he once said, “men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please” (202).
Colonial expansion and Capitalism too are responsible for the present crisis.

R.G. Collingwood, an English historian says that nature has no “inside” which means the events
of nature are just events occurring naturally and it is not an act of an external agency. “The
events of nature are mere events, not the acts of agents whose thought the scientist endeavours to
trace” (202 – 03). But on the other hand, human history is deliberate and a historian is interested
“in the social customs which they create by their thought as a framework” (while eating, sleeping
and love making are things to satisfy their natural appetites like in the animal world). According
to Collingwood, there is no need to bring together – the human and the natural.

Benedetto Croce under the influence of other philosophers argued that both should go together
because “when we peer into nature, we find only ourselves”. As an example, he suggests the
image of the ‘rock’ and he says that rock does not ‘exist’ without humans thinking of it. Similar
thoughts existed during the initial decades of the twentieth century too. Joseph Stalin in the text
Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) states that “Changes in geographical environment
of any importance require millions of years, whereas a few hundred or a couple of thousand
years are enough for even very important changes in the system of human society”. Thus, Stalin
also indicates that there is no need to differentiate between Natural and Human Histories. As we
come to the modern context, human beings have become something much larger than simple
biological agents. They have become geological agents changing the most physical processes of
earth. According to Dipesh, the distinction between biological agents (bacteria, virus, fungus,
etc. – weapons to destroy the world) and geological agents (changes on earth due to geological
processes like volcano eruption, cliff erosion, etc.) is significant. He says that “Humans are
biological agents both collectively and as individuals” but they have become geological agents
too recently and therefore the distinction between human and natural histories have begun to
collapse.

Thesis 2: The Idea of the Anthropocene, the New Geological Epoch When Humans Exist as
a Geological Force, Severely Qualifies Humanist Histories of Modernity/Globalization

Basic Idea: Humans as a Geological force in the context of Modernity/Globalization and the
notion of freedom

The second part of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay begins with the thought of combining human
cultural and historical diversity which is a relevant question regarding human history for the last
250 years. It holds a special significance in the context of globalization. At this point he
introduces the notion of “freedom” which meant different things at different times. At times,
freedom referred to the ideas of human and citizen’s rights or the concept of decolonization and
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self-rule. The word ‘freedom’ is often a blanket term “for diverse imaginations of human
autonomy and sovereignty” (208). Dipesh cites a few examples for the freedom struggle by
examining the works of Kant, Hegel and Marx or issues like class struggle, slavery, Russian and
Chinese revolution, struggle against slavery, resistance to Nazism and Fascism, various
decolonization movements, fight for civil rights in the case of African Americans, indigenous
peoples and Indian Dalits, etc. According to Amartya Sen, freedom is the most important motif
of written accounts of human history (Development as Freedom, 1999). Dipesh writes, “Freedom
has not always carried the same meaning for everyone” (208).

During the early times, philosophers were concerned with only one thing, that is, the fight
against “injustice” – “how humans would escape injustice, oppression, inequality…” (208). They
never linked Geological time (a system of chronological dating to describe the timing and
relationships of events that have occurred during Earth’s history) and chronology of human
history. Dipesh says that the notion of “modern freedom” and progress (development) has
accelerated the use of fossil fuel. He illustrates the examples like the beginning of agriculture,
emergence of cities, rise of religion, etc. (human history and civilization) as responsible for the
gradual shift of earth’s condition during the last ten thousand years as we moved from
Pleistocene (glacial period) to the warmer Holocene (current geological epoch which is warm).
Dipesh Chakrabarty asserts that the current period is known or should be known as the time of
Anthropocene (climate change due to human activity). Due to the increase in population and
burning of fossil fuel, humans have become “a geological agent on the planet” (209). Thus,
scientists recognize this era as the beginning of a geological era, “one which humans act as a
main determinant of the environment of the planet” (209). Therefore, this new geological age is
known as Anthropocene. He also links the concept of Deep time (introduced by John McPhee)
and its interference with human time as the key issues in the Anthropocene. Deep time is a
recently discovered time and is connected with geological time or cosmic time, that is, billions of
years. It is the representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. The proposal of
Anthropocene or Anthropocene ere was first made by Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer in
a statement published in 2000. It states, “Considering… the major and still growing impact of
human activities on Earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global, scales, it seems to us
more than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by
proposing the term ‘anthropocene’ for the current geological epoch” (209).

Crutzen says that anthropocene can be connected to the present, “human-dominated, geological
epoch, supplementing the Holocene”. One can trace the beginning of anthropocene in the latter
part of the 18th century with the increase of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. It is
difficult to exactly trace the beginning of ‘anthropocene’ but it became official in 2008 with the
newsletter stating the same published by the Geological Society of London as they found
sufficient evidence.

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This leads to another question – the period from 1750 – is that the time of freedom or
anthropocene? Humanity has played the role of a planetary killer and they have become
geological agents through their own decisions (freedom collapsing with human and geological
chronologies). Dipesh says that the problem has been identified and one should develop a world-
wide strategy to sustain our ecosystems. He says that ‘Enligtenment’ is once again needed even
more than in the past in this Anthropocene era.

Climate change is sure to increase our anxieties regarding an unimaginable future and the
scientists feel that only “reason” can guide us out of this problem. The “Orwellian Nightmare” is
imminent and as Mar Maslin, a Professor of Geography says, “It is unlikely that global politics
will solve global warming. Technofixes (technological solution to a problem) are dangerous or
cause problems…”. He also says that nations and regions should prepare themselves to fight
against anthropocene and they should have a plan for the next 50 years. Thus, the notion of
freedom should be used more seriously in this era which is anthropocenic. He goes on to say
that, in the face of sharp inequalities between and inside nations and steep population increase,
freedom in human societies will be under threat since politics is never based on reason alone.
Necessary long-term planning will be up against short-term politics.

Thesis 3: The Geological Hypothesis Regarding the Anthropocene Requires Us to Put

Global Histories of Capital in Conversation with the Species History of Humans

Basic Idea: Humans as species (a group) and the influence of Capitalism

Dipesh Chakrabarty introduces the concept of Capitalist globalization and he also writes about
its critiques. He says that when one analyses in the context of globalization, one can read
“climate change only as a crisis of capitalist management”. At this point, Dipesh makes a
distinction between two things – “recorded history of human beings and their deep history”.
Recorded history refers to the time for which written records exist and the time beyond the
written records is called deep history (the distant past of the human species).

The Anthropocene has now become entangled with human history. Deep history necessitates
consideration of human and other life forms as species. It is important to have a conversation
between disciplines and between recorded and deep histories of human beings in the same way
that the agricultural revolution of ten thousand years ago could not be explained except through a
convergence of three disciplines: geology, archaeology, and history’ (an interdisciplinary
approach). The combination of recorded and deep histories fundamentally stretches the very idea
of historical understanding. Thus, two points emerge – Chakrabarty does not specify which
disciplines should enter the conversation on the present crisis and we need to think about
appropriate selection, and second as Darwin’s major biographers indicate, ‘his notebooks make
plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were
written into the equation from the start – Darwinism was always intended to explain human
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society.’ We would do well to bear this in mind as we consider the history-species problem
today. Thus, one should look into the deep history of humans to examine the notion of
anthropocene.

Thesis 4: The Cross-Hatching of Species History and the History of Capital is a Process of
Probing the Limits of Historical Understanding

Basic Idea: A reading of both, the Species history and history of Capital leads to certain limits of
Historical understanding

Dipesh Chakrabarty says that, “We never experience ourselves as a species” and the destruction
occurs without any distinctions. We should realize that the current crisis affects all. For example,
the drought in Australia and fire in California affect rich and poor alike, and the anxiety
provoked by global warming is “reminiscent of the days when many feared a global nuclear
war”, the difference being that nuclear war “would have been a conscious decision on the part of
the powers that be” while climate change “is an unintended consequence of human actions”.

First, the use of the past tense concerning global nuclear war is somewhat surprising, given the
current setting of the Doomsday Clock by Atomic Scientists at six minutes to the fatal hour and
the warning letters sent to The Wall Street Journal on 4 January 2007 and 15 January 2008 by
Henry Kissinger and others. Second, the balance of the evidence is now surely such that it is no
longer appropriate to talk of climate change as unintended: denials are now as irresponsible as
former dismissals of the carcinogenic effects of smoking tobacco. One is reminded of the
Scottish story concerning the poor souls sent to Hell. “We didna ken [We did not know]”, they
protest. And the Devil responds: “Ye ken noo [You know now]”.

Dipesh Chakrabarty concludes his perspicacious and stimulating essay with the observation:
“climate change poses for us a question of human collectivity, an us, pointing to a figure of the
universal that escapes our capacity to experience of the world. It is more like a universal that
arises from a shared sense of catastrophe” (222). Indeed, if the ship is sinking, all hands must be
applied to the pumps.

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