Henry Thomas Buckle

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) was an English historian who set out to discover the laws governing the progress of civilization. The son of a wealthy London shipowner, he was too delicate for school and educated himself in a library of twenty thousand books, mastering many languages and becoming one of England's strongest chess players. The first two volumes of his History of Civilization in England, published in 1857 and 1861, argued that climate, food and soil, and above all the growth of skepticism and knowledge, determined the fate of nations, and were widely read and attacked. He died of typhoid in Damascus, the work unfinished.