Robert Ardrey book The Territorial Imperative
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966)

The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations is a 1966 nonfiction book by American writer 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 was an immediate success and remains a widely influential work of popular science. It extended Ardrey's groundbreaking anthropological work, contributed to the development of the science of ethology, and encouraged an increasing public interest in human origins.
Robert Ardrey book The Territorial Imperative
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations (1966)