Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu , generally referred to as simply Montesquieu (US: /ˈmɒntəskjuː/, UK also /ˌmɒntɛˈskjɜː/, French: [mɔ̃tɛskjø]), was a French judge, man of letters… See more

Montesquieu was born at the Château de la Brède in southwest France, 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of Bordeaux. His father, Jacques de Secondat (1654–1713), was a soldier with a long noble ancestry, including descent from … See more

Montesquieu's philosophy of history minimized the role of individual persons and events. He expounded the view in Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline, th… See more

Montesquieu is credited as being among the progenitors, who include Herodotus and Tacitus, of anthropology—as being among the first to extend comparative methods of classification to the political forms in human societies. I… See more

Another example of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, outlined in The Spirit of Law and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological climate theory, which holds that climate may substantially influence th… See more