Forest History

This is an anthology on the current use in Denmark of historical maps within a large number of subject areas and topics. Each of the articles focus on one such area.

The book is published electronically within the series of Geoforum Perspektiv as vol. 38 in open access online.

America’s Fires – a brief, straightforwardly organised, tersely argued book with a national focus – is perhaps Pyne’s most accessible demonstration of why fire histories matter, how to think about them, and how to go about writing them. This book and this subject are relevant to environmental historians of other parts of the globe because, despite Pyne’s herculean efforts, the fire histories of large areas of our planet – today experiencing major wildfires – remain to be written.

L'articolo, pubblicato sul n. 211 Giugno 2015 della rivista Sherwood, è il terzo di uno studio sui tagli per usi bellici effettuati nella Foresta di Camaldoli (AR, Italia) nel periodo 1915-inizio 1919.Si basa sull'analisi di 42 fotografie dell'epoca, scattate per documentare l'attività della segheria della Società Fratelli Feltrinelli Legnami, integrate da studi d'archivo e bibliografici. In particolare, vengono esaminate le tre linee di teleferiche documentate dalle immagini, evidenziando particolari tecnici e modalità di funzionamento. Il testo riporta anche il dato della superficie complessiva delle abetine tagliate a raso per usi bellici a Camaldoli, pari ad ha 152,6825, calcolato previo esame dell'età dei rimboschimenti riportati nel piano di assestamento 1927-1936.

The La Verna's forest after the storm of March 5, 2015: problems and hypotheses to rebuilding. (Sherwood, n.212 Luglio-Agosto 2015, pp.5-8)
The article describes the damage caused to La Verna's forest from the windstorm of March 5, 2015 and compares them with those from a similar phenomenon at December 31, 1943. The analysis of what was done after 1943, allowed us to capture some useful information for the actions of clearing and rebuilding of the forest area that was destroyed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhymlUnTFUs&t=6s  .


Rambouillet, c'est la chasse, c'est même un "païs de chasse" comme le dit le Journal de Louis XVI. Depuis le Moyen Âge, la chasse semble avoir transformé Rambouillet, au moins autant que Rambouillet a transformé la chasse. C'est par ailleurs la pratique de cette activité en forêt d'Yveline qui a permis de conserver ce vaste massif boisé : le plus grand de l'Ouest parisien. En revenant sur les chasses, de Louis XVI aux présidents de la République, cette conférence se propose de partir à la découverte de l'histoire de ce domaine, de ses chasses et de ses natures. En faisant revivre les chasses de Rambouillet, le temps d'une soirée, c'est toute la forêt, ses animaux, ses habitants qui réapparaissent et qui permettent de mieux comprendre ce patrimoine naturel unique.

The iron and steel industry was the emblem of the industrial revolution in the 19th and early 20th century United States, playing an important role in shaping the nation’s transportation infrastructure, the industrial specialization of its cities, and its rise as an economic and military power. Iron is an abundant but generally non-renewable natural resource that must be extracted, concentrated, and processed to create a useable and merchantable product such as pig iron, wrought iron, or steel. All steps in iron and steel production – from mining to smelting - may incur some impact to the environment. The scope and scale of environmental impact of the iron and steel industry in the 19th century mirrored changes in mining technology – from quarry to open-pit mining - shifts in fuels used in ore smelting – from charcoal to coal and coke – and developments in transportation – from wagon roads to canals and railroads. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, government and industry response to air and water pollution by the iron and steel industries spurred the development of agencies and legislation to control industrial pollution.

Forest science, technical practice, wood policy and colonial context in Equatorial Guinea (1929-1968) (Abstract) From the mid 1920's, wood production in the forest of Equatorial Guinea undergoes an intense transformation. It ceases to being controlled by certain European commercial companies and turns into a colonial practice supported by the influx of important Spanish financial resources/funds. Taking as an initial point of reference 1921, when the Forestry Commission of the Spanish Territories in the Gulf of Guinea was created, the present study deals with a double development: the forest administration in the colony and the forest knowledge and how it is transferred or produced within the colony. The first one shows the actual role of the Commission. The second one allows to grasp how the four key concepts of scientific forestry (i.e. measure, renewal, profit and regulation) adopt a new nuance as per the practice that Spanish colonialism displays in the Gulf of Guinea

Desde mediados de la década de 1920, la explotación maderera de las selvas de la actual República de Guinea Ecuatorial conoce una intensa transformación: deja de estar protago-nizada por determinadas compañías comerciales europeas para convertirse en una práctica colonial sustentada por la afluencia de importantes capitales financieros metropolitanos. Tomando como referencia inicial 1929, año en el que se crea el Servicio Forestal de los Te-rritorios Españoles en el Golfo de Guinea, el trabajo expone una doble evolución: la de la administración forestal en la colonia y la de los conocimientos silvícolas que se trasladan o se producen dentro de ella. La primera muestra la forma que el Servicio acaba adquirien-do con el tiempo. La segunda permite vislumbrar cómo los cuatro conceptos nucleares de la silvicultura científica-medida, renovación, beneficio y regulación-adquieren un signifi-cado nuevo con la práctica que el colonialismo español despliega en el Golfo de Guinea. Palabras clave: Guinea Ecuatorial, colonialismo, silvicultura, extractivismo forestal

I 2007 var det 15 år siden Statskog SF ble etablert, men det var større milepæler som ble rundet dette året. For det var 50 år siden Direktoratet for statens skoger (DSS) ble skilt ut fra Landbruksdepartementet som et frittstående direktorat. I tillegg var det nøyaktig 150 år siden, i 1857, at de aller første forstmennene ble ansatt i offentlig tjeneste som skogforvaltere i Norge, og dannet opptakten til etableringen av en egen norsk skogetat. Statens skogvesen ble etablert for å bedre skogforholdene i landet etter århundrer med hard hogst og til dels rovdrift på skogen. Utover 1900-tallet ble skogsdriften stadig viktigere som en politisk målsetning for Skogvesenet, og med DSS ble dette næringsaspektet styrket og skulle sørge for at det offentlige skogbruket ble enda mer sentral for landets økonomiske vekst og velstand. Med omorganiseringen til statsforetak i 1993 ble målet om verdiskaping ytterligere forsterket. I etterkrigstiden har samtidig samfunnsoppgavene blitt stadig viktigere, med blant annet tilrettelegging for et allment friluftsliv, hyttebygging og utvikling av næringsliv i distriktene.

Etter 150 års virksomhet i spennet mellom næring og samfunnsoppdrag, forvalter Statskog SF i dag mange viktige naturområder og kulturminner. Denne boken er en del av Statskogs landsverneplan (LVP) under Fornyings- og administrasjonsdepartementets (FAD) prosjekt Statens kulturhistoriske eiendommer (SKE), med formålet å registrere og vernevurdere offentlige bygninger. Boken er produsert av Statskog SF og NIKU (Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning) i kulturminneåret 2009. Boken omhandler skog- og utmarksforvaltningens mange virksomheter, og derigjennom fortelles historiene bak Statskogs i underkant av 1000 bygninger som ligger spredt på statens grunn over hele landet.

This paper examines how contemporary literary fiction responds to the climate crisis and the attendant call for a seemingly universalist "species view" of human beings. What does it mean to think of the human as a species, how can we find traces of species being in literature, and how do they interact with other dimensions of human lives? To address these questions, the paper confronts recent accounts of historical context, animal characters, and capitalist time with Annie Proulx's Barkskins (2016). As this confrontation shows, Proulx's novel teaches its readers to be a specieswithout ignoring differences of race, class, and gender. abstract © FRAME NO. 29.2 NOVEMBER 2016 | 71 -90

Toby Creek is a tributary of the Clarion River in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. For nineteen years until 1882, the firm of Corbett and Wilson logged a 913 acre tract along Toby Creek using a series of three splash dams to transport logs by water to the Clarion River for processing and final transport. Historic images place one of the splash dams at the mouth of Toby Creek. This dam stood until the construction of Piney Reservoir in the 1920s. Field surveys conducted in 2010 located the remains of a second splash dam just above the mouth of Tarkiln Run. Remains include two rock walls spanning the distance from the stream to adjacent valley slopes and well-preserved, submerged wooden structures including mudsills, rock-filled log pens and a large panel constructed of plank. I discuss the history of “splashing” Toby Creek and the significance of the splash dam site in documenting regional logging history.

TF Bourdillon, a coffee planter turned forester was appointed as Assistant Conservator of Forest in Thiruvitamkur princely state in 1880s. Subsequently, he became Conservator and held his office for nearly a decade half until 1908. This period saw modernization of the forest department in Thiruvitamkur. The report prepared by Bourdillon in early 1890 titled “A Report on the Forests of Travancore” is a revealing account of the idea of nature, human nature besides the ideals and programmes of recasting these natures in tune with the ongoing and expanding discourse of progress, improvement and civilising. This paper, while critically analysing the implicit ideals and strategies of valorising the Forestry Knowledge to create a modern forest administration and a ‘government forest estate’ also attempts to track the wider implications and known parallels of analogues projects in the social and administrative arena in princely Thiruvitamkur. Considering the role of modern forms of knowledge in re-casting the nature and perpetuating the idea of a mutable human nature is consequent to emergence of discourse of modern and progressive.

This report has been prepared for the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. The report provides a contextual overview post-contact history of the Southern Brigalow Belt biogeographic region (SBB - see Map 1) with particular reference to forested areas. This study has been developed in conjunction with the identification and recording of cultural
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heritage sites located in forested areas of the SBB, principally on lands under crown tenure such as state forests (SF), timber reserves (TR), national parks (NP), conservation areas and other crown leases. During fieldwork conducted in the SBB in October and November 1998 and March and June 1999 more than 800 cultural heritage sites were identified, of which 260 have been visited, recorded and entered onto the Cultural Heritage Information on the Environment and Forests (CHIEF) database. The fieldwork also included workshops with Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Department of Primary Industries Forestry (DPIF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) officers (serving and retired) and local historical associations and other interested parties. At these workshops participants identified possible cultural heritage sites and provided oral testimony of aspects of the history of sites and associated areas.

Edward Oswald Shebbeare was the transport officer on the 1924 Everest expedition.  He was subsequently transport officer for the Germans on Kanchenjunga in 1929 and 1931 and deputy leader of the 1933 Everest expedition.    A founder member of the Himalayan Club (f. 1928), Shebbeare’s knowledge of Sikkim and of indigenous peoples and their languages was central to the success of these and other expeditions.  Despite this, his contribution has largely been downplayed by historians of Everest and Himalayan mountaineering, in part because practical knowledge in a colonial context formed no part of the contemporary archetype of the mountaineering hero.  Lacking a degree or university education, he had joined the Indian Forest Service in 1903, eventually becoming Chief Conservator of Forests for Bengal.  Class and colonial experience differentiated him from most of the mountaineers selected by the Mount Everest Committee.  This paper therefore examines the hidden histories of exploration, highlighting the colonial subject’s role in traversing imperial and indigenous cultures, framing colonial encounters, mediating alterity and making expeditionary knowledge possible.  In the mountains, jungles and forests of the Himalaya, E. O. Shebbeare became a pioneering naturalist and forest conservationist, eventually becoming Chief Game Warden for Malaya.  Captured by the Japanese in 1942 as part of F. Spencer Chapman’s first ‘stay behind’ party, he was interned in Singapore, retiring to Oxfordshire in 1947.  As well as significant contributions to the scholarly literature on the flora and fauna of S. E. Asia, in his retirement he wrote Soondar Mooni: The Story of an Indian Elephant (Gollancz, 1958), a book that explores non-human subjectivities and agency, providing us with evidence of Shebbeare’s deep sensibility for the ‘more-than-human’ world.

The Ciuc-basin is known as one of the coldest regions of the country, where the forests are mainly formed of pines and this vision is regularly projected to the Medieval Times. Archaeological data does not confirm this presumption, on 3–15th century sites often appear carbonised oak pieces. Oak timber elements can be found also in medieval churches and manors. From the 3 –4th and 16–17th centuries there are several data regarding intensive metallurgy activities which needed a huge amount of hard wood, namely oak and beech. The former oak forests are mentioned in the written sources, their memory is proven by the place names and also by pollen-data of environment history researches. The main conclusions of the paper are: the better climate conditions of the post-roman and medieval periods were more likely with those of central Transylvania and allowed the development of local human communities. The internal low-situated (oak) forests were cleared
continuously specially in the 17–18th centuries. Once the climate changes of the small ice-age its effects were stronger in the Ciuc-depression due its high altitude and thermic inversion phenomenon. In these conditions the competition between species was won by the pines. The present flora and forest situation of the intra-mountain
depressions was formed by the fallowing factors: human interventions (clearing), cooling of the climate (“little ice age”) and competition among the species. The projection of the present environment situations into the historical times could lead to erroneous interpretations.

Vers 1900, la Pologne connaît une multiplication d’actes délictueux commis en bandes, comme les vols à main armée, les extorsions de fonds ou les crimes crapuleux. L’article examine une affaire de ce type, un cas de piraterie fluviale porté devant le tribunal de Płock en avril 1901. Sur les bancs des accusés siégeaient onze hommes suspectés d’avoir, durant une dizaine d’années, commis des vols et extorsions contre les marchands de bois opérant sur la Vistule. La démarche adoptée vise à reconstituer le vécu des prévenus ainsi que leurs conditions de vie sur le plan économique, social et environnemental. Proches à bien des égards des « primitifs de la révolte » décrits par Eric Hobsbawm, les « pirates » de Płock n’étaient certainement pas des militants soutenant un projet clair de bouleversement social ; il s’agissait plutôt de travailleurs appauvris à la recherche de moyens de survie, dans un contexte de pénurie d’emploi et de déclin des ressources locales en bois et en poisson. Placée sous la loupe du micro-historien, cette affaire fait ressortir l’importance du changement social et environnemental qui empreint les manifestations de la violence quotidienne dans la Pologne de la fin du XIXe siècle.

[IT] L’articolo, edito in quattro lingue, ripercorrere la pluricentenaria storia dell’intervento dell’uomo nella foresta di Monte Senario, luogo di origine dei frati Servi di Maria, evidenziando come sia possibile realizzare uno sviluppo sostenibile che unisca le esigenze economiche alla salvaguardia del patrimonio boschivo (sintesi dell’articolo già pubblicato su Studi Storici OSM nel 2020).

[EN] The paper, published in four languages, retraces the centuries-old history of human intervention in the forest of Monte Senario, the place of origin of the friars Servants of Mary, highlighting how it is possible to achieve sustainable development that combines economic needs with the protection of the wooded heritage (summary of the article already published in Studi Storici OSM in 2020).

[FR] L'article, publié en quatre langues, retrace l'histoire séculaire de l'intervention humaine dans la forêt de Monte Senario, lieu d'origine des frères Servites de Marie, en soulignant comment il est possible de parvenir à un développement durable qui combine les besoins économiques avec la protection du patrimoine forestier (résumé de l'article déjà paru dans Studi Storici OSM en 2020).

[ES] El artículo, publicado en cuatro idiomas, recorre la historia centenaria de la intervención humana en el bosque de Monte Sena-rio, lugar de origen de los frailes Siervos de María, destacando cómo es posible alcanzar un desarrollo sostenible que combine las necesidades económicas con la protección del patrimonio forestal (resumen del artículo ya publicado en Studi Storici OSM en 2020).

This chapter deals with the rise of environmental history as a research field and later a discipline in Finland.

Timo Myllyntaus & Mikko Saikku, “Environmental History, A New Dis-cipline with Long Traditions,” Encountering the Past in Nature, Essays in Environmental History, Ed. by Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, 1st edition, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press 1999, pp. 17-26, 2nd edition, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press 2001, pp. 1-28.

This study was designed to examine the relationship between land management practices of Indian communities prior to contact with Europeans and the nature or character of subsequent catastrophic forest fires in the Oregon Coast Range. The research focused on spatial and temporal patterns of Indian burning across the landscape from 1491 until 1848, and corresponding patterns of catastrophic fire events from 1849 until 1951. Archival and anthropological research methods were used to obtain early surveys, maps, drawings, photographs, interviews, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) inventories, eyewitness accounts and other sources of evidence that document fire history. Data were tabulated, mapped, and digitized as new GIS layers for purposes of comparative analysis. An abundance of useful historical evidence was found for reconstructing precontact vegetation patterns and human burning practices in western Oregon. The data also proved useful for documenting local and regional forest fire histories. Precontact Indians used fire to produce landscape patterns of trails, patches, fields, woodlands, forests and grasslands that varied from time to time and place to place, partly due to demographic, cultural, topographic, and climatic differences that existed throughout the Coast Range. Native plants were systematically managed by local Indian families in even-aged stands, usually dominated by a single species, throughout all river basins of the study area. Oak, filberts, camas, wapato, tarweed, yampah, strawberries, huckleberries, brackenfern, nettles, and other plants were raised in select areas by all known tribes, over long periods of time. However, current scientific and policy assumptions regarding the abundance and extent of precontact western Oregon old-growth forests may have been erroneous. This study demonstrates a high rate of coincidence between the land management practices of precontact Indian communities, and the causes, timing, boundaries, severity, and extent of subsequent catastrophic forest fires in the same areas. Information developed from this study will be of value to researchers, wildlife managers, forest landowners, and others with an interest in the history and resources of the Oregon Coast Range.

[IT] Il saggio di storia forestale qui proposto ripercorre le principali tappe del rapporto tra i frati Servi di Maria e i boschi che circondano il luogo d’origine dell’Ordine, partendo dalla ricostruzione della formazione del territorio pertinenziale al convento. Il contributo, oltre a far luce sulla storia del paesaggio di questa parte di territorio montano a cavallo tra la città di Firenze e la vallata del Mugello, sfiora i campi della storia della mentalità, economica e sociale. L’autore evidenzia quindi come nel corso dei secoli sia mutato il rapporto tra l’ambiente silvestre del Monte Senario e l’uomo-frate che l’abita, rintracciandone le motivazioni spirituali, ma indicando anche quei fattori di natura politica ed economica che hanno determinato tale evoluzione.

[EN] This paper of forest history reviews the principal stages of the relationship of the Friars Servants of Mary with the woodland which surrounds the place of the foundation of the Order, starting with the reconstruction of the formation of the territory around the convent. This article not only sheds light on the land in this mountainous territory between the city of Florence and the Mugello valley but it also touches on subjects of the history of economic and social mentality. The author thus shows how in the course of centuries the relationship between the woodland surrounding Monte Senario and the men and friars who lived there has changed. He traces not only the spiritual motivation but also the political and economic factors which caused such a development.

«Of everybody, of nobody». Common lands in Veneto during the Restoration In large part of Europe, the turn of the nineteenth century was a key period in the process of rationalization of the property rights and the consolidation of what Marc Bloch called agrarian individualism. The latter unfolded through two interrelated dynamics: the privatizations of the common lands and the restrictions imposed by state authorities to common and customary activities. This article explores the ambivalent relationship between these two aspects in the specific context of the Veneto region (northeastern Italy) during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Little attention has been paid to writing a more inclusive forest history of the Philippines, one that combines a biocentric and anthropocentric focus. Deep forestry is an attempt to do just that. It shows how the forest was shaped by climate, soil, fire, and animals as well as by human actions. Not only did people shape the forest, but the forest shaped the people. This article examines how these deep historical processes have worked out over time and explores the implications of adopting such a perspective.

This HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) report focuses on the issue of so-called natural landscapes, considered as landscapes co-constructed by Mankind over the last centuries. Written records, old maps and plans, and other documents relating to past landscapes are used in a geohistorical approach. The aim is to reconstruct at best some characters of ancient landscapes, to understand their genesis and historical evolution, analyze whenever possible the impact of past practices on the current landscape. This approach is mainly applied to forests and grasslands.

Au début du XVe siècle, les forêts domaniales devinrent un enjeu majeur dans les affaires du royaume de France. Gérées par l’administration des Eaux et Forêts, elles furent sur ordre du roi l’objet d’une surveillance particulière. L’étude du Coutumier d’Hector de Chartres, un registre du XVe siècle consignant les droits d’usage de centaines d’usagers des forêts du domaine normand de Charles VI, révèle la place que ces dernières occupaient dans la société en France dans les derniers siècles du Moyen Âge. D’une part, le Coutumier démontre qu’elles étaient non seulement importantes dans l’économie de la province mais qu’elles jouaient aussi un rôle essentiel dans la vie autant à la campagne que dans les villes. D’autre part, avec l’analyse des ordonnances forestières du XIVe siècle et du début du XVe siècle, il illustre comment elles furent d’une importance capitale pour le roi puisque ce dernier y prenait le bois nécessaire à la construction de sa marine et à l’entretien de ses forteresses normandes et qu’il en tirait d’importants revenus dans un contexte d’hostilités avec l’Angleterre. Ainsi, une relation de réciprocité bénéfique pour le roi et les usagers s’installa à travers un complexe système d’usages et de redevances. En cherchant à protéger ces bénéfices, les rois de France tentèrent de gérer adéquatement leurs forêts, établissant ainsi les jalons d’une foresterie durable tournée vers la préservation des ressources sylvicoles et se posant en gardiens du bien commun.

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At the beginning of the XVth century, domanial forests became a major issue in the affairs of the kingdom of France. Managed by the Waters and Forests administration, they were put under close surveillance by the king’s decree. The study of Hector de Chartres’ customary, a XVth century register containing the customs of hundreds of users of Charles VI’s norman domain’s forests, reveals the place that they held in France at the end of the Middle Ages. It shows first that they were not only important in the province’s economic life but that they also played a major role in its urban and rural life. It also shows, with the analysis of a XIVth and XVth century corpus of royal ordonnances, how they were important for the king, who took there the ressources he needed to build a navy and maintain his fortresses in Normandy and who benefited from the users’ royalties. Thus, a complex relation which greatly benefited the two parties was created through a complex system of customs and royalties. By trying to protect these benefits, the kings of France tried to manage adequately their forests, establishing the bases of sustainable forestry oriented towards the conservation of forest ressources and acting as gardians of the kingdom’s common good.

This paper addresses the issue of how the Ottomans perceived and interacted with the natural environment, pursuing an increasing scale from the private garden to parks and then on to rural and forest areas. Throughout their history, the Ottomans conceived the natural environment in a rather pragmatic manner. Being a common topos in the pre-industrial era, the environment’s foremost use had been to sustain the basic needs of the agricultural society. When it comes to aesthetics, the Ottoman Turks seem to be fond of naturalism, which in the 18th century reached a level of adoration of nature in visual arts. Finally, in the last century of the Ottoman empire the environment was approached also as a scientific subject.

The present paper analyzes the relationship of the Ottoman wars to the loss of forests in the Carpathian Basin. An important thesis of twentieth-century scholarship was that the Ottomans were to be blamed for the crash of the so-called "traditional" landscape of the lowlands of the Carpathian Basin. The paper argues that this view needs serious reconsideration, especially in light of research into two interconnected aspects found in a Hungarian region, Transdanubia, that is the focus of the paper. First, we estimate the amount of woodland before and after the Ottoman occupation. Second, we quantify the role military fortifications may have played in wood consumption (and therefore potentially in deforestation). We focus on the central parts of the Transdanubian region. The counties to be examined in more detail (Vas, Veszprém, and Zala) were among those most significantly impacted by the continuous wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This area arguably could be indicative of processes in other lowlands and hilly areas in the Carpathian Basin, though bearing in mind that forest regeneration may have been fundamentally different in the territories of lowlands, hilly areas, and mountain ranges.

The article deals with the issue of land and forest common rights (servitutes praediorum) of the inhabitants of Leżajsk. The functioning and the difficult process of abolishing the rights of the municipality’s to collect wood from manor’s forests in the 19th century, reflected a general tendency in Galicia to appearance numerous disputes and conflicts during of the reform abolishing common rights. The Leżajsk example is one of the few cases in which the municipality until 1865 could collect construction timber from forests for the purpose of maintaining urban infrastructure - passenger and freight ferries, roads, pavements, canals, bridges and crossings, and signposts. The investigation conducted by the local commission of common rights conducted in the years 1865-1869 finally resulted in the abolition of rights through their redemption with compensation. After a few years of difficult negotiations and appeals to the Interior Ministry in Vienna, the magistrate received compensation from Alfred Potocki in the amount of 1977 guldens. The article, based on extremely valuable sources not used so far, focuses on unexplored subject, which, in the broader context of socio-economic changes, can shed a whole new light on the perception of modernization processes in Galicia.

This work explores the issue of deforestation in Venetian Dalmatia from the 16th century to the end of the 18th century. It begins by asking whether the Venetians really did destroy all the forest in Dalmatia and to what degree they contributed to the process of deforestation in the region. An analysis of the relevant sources and literature in the realm of historiography, environmental history and natural sciences reveals a complex problem which requires that a number of factors be taken into account to resolve the issue.