The Territorial Imperative
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| Author | Robert Ardrey |
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| Illustrator | Berdine Ardrey (neé Grunewald) |
| Language | English |
| Series | Nature of Man Series |
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Publication date
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1966 |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | |
| Preceded by | African Genesis |
| Followed by | The Social Contract |
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations, usually referred to as The Territorial Imperative, is a 1966 nonfiction work by Robert Ardrey. It describes the evolutionarily determined instinct among humans toward territoriality and the implications of this territoriality in human meta-phenomena such as property ownership and nation building .The Territorial Imperative extended Ardrey's groundbreaking anthropological work, contributed to the development of the science of ethology, and encouraged an increasing public interest in human origins.
The Territorial Imperative is the second book in Robert Ardrey's Nature of Man Series. It is preceded by African Genesis and followed by The Social Contract, and The Hunting Hypothesis. It was illustrated by Ardrey's wife, the South African actress and illustrator Berdine Ardrey (née Grunewald). Ardrey dedicated The Territorial Imperative to Henry Eliot Howard, who was noted for being one of the first to describe in detail the territoriality behaviors in birds.
The Territorial Imperative develops the theses originally introduced in African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man, which was published five years earlier. In African Genesis Ardrey posited that man originated in Africa (instead of Asia), that he is driven by inherited instincts to acquire land and defend territory, and that the development of weapons was a fundamental turning point in his evolution.The Territorial Imperative develops these theses with a special emphasis on the hold that territory has on man. It goes on to elucidate the role that inherited evolutionary instinct, particularly the territorial imperative, plays in human society in phenomena such as property ownership and nation building.
The Territorial Imperative caused significant scientific and popular controversy. In it Ardrey restated and developed his challenge to the reigning methodological assumption of the social sciences, that human behavior is fundamentally distinct from animal behavior. As he writes in The Territorial Imperative, "The dog barking at you from behind his master’s fence acts for a motive indistinguishable from that of his master when the fence was built." Robert Wokler wrote of Ardrey's challenge to the established life sciences:
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