The chapter examines the impact of climate, weather and geography on the conduct of armed conflict in the long 19th century. It shows that climate was not a major determinant of military campaigns from Napoleon to the colonial wars in Africa, but was nevertheless their inescapable context.
The history of the 19th century is a history of overcoming climatic limits with the aid of tools acquired through the process of modernization, and this phenomenon did not avoid wars and warfare.