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Overview
Wood was essential to the survival of the Venetian Republic. To build its great naval and merchant ships, maintain its extensive levee system, construct buildings, fuel industries, and heat homes, Venice needed access to large quantities of oak and beech timber. The island city itself was devoid of any forests, so the state turned to its mainland holdings for this vital resource. A Forest on the Sea explores the history of this enterprise and Venice’s efforts to extend state control over its natural resources.
Karl Appuhn explains how Venice went from an isolated city completely dependent on foreign suppliers for wood to a regional state with a sophisticated system of administering and preserving forests. Intent on conserving this invaluable resource, Venice employed specialized experts to manage its forests. The state bureaucracy supervised this work, developing a philosophy about the environment—namely, a mutual dependence between humans and the natural world—that was far ahead of its time. Its efforts kept many large forest preserves under state protection, some of which still stand today.
A Forest on the Sea offers a completely novel perspective on how Renaissance Europeans thought about the natural world. It sheds new light on how cultural conceptions about nature influenced political policies for resource conservation and land management in Venice.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780801892615 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/11/2010 |
| Pages: | 376 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Tables and FiguresAcknowledgmentsNote on DatesIntroductionStates, Economies, and NatureChronology1. Forest Exploitation before the Venetian ConquestVenetian Demand for Forest ProductsRegional Forest Ecologies and the Venetian Timber SupplyLocal Practices of Forest Exploitation and Venetian ShortagesPerceived Shortages and the Emergence of the Market Hierarchy2. The Venetian Discovery of Mainland ForestsWater Management and Venetian Interpretations of Mainland LandscapesLocal Property Rights and the Limits of Venetian Power to Preserve ForestsThe Failure of Market Regulations3. Venetian Forestry Laws and the Creation of Public Forest ReservesThe Creation of the Boschi PubbliciThe 1476 Forestry Laws and the Hierarchy of Forest UtilizationThe Cambrai Crisis, Fiscal Reform, and the Expansion of the State ReservesThe Expansion of Forestry Legislation and Its Consequences4. The Venetian Forest BureaucracyA Divided BureaucracyA New Role for the Provveditori alle LegneSixteenth-Century Forest SurveysHarvests, Local Resistance, and Perceptions of ScarcityThe Catastico Garzoni and the Knowledge Gap5. The Preservation and Reproduction of BureaucraticKnowledgeVenetian Bureaucratic ExpertiseThe Cadastral Surveys and the Preservation of Collective KnowledgeThe Cadastral Surveys as Natural Historical NarrativeTopographical Maps and the Reproduction of Knowledge6. Nature's Republic or Republican Nature?Peak Demand and Peak Anxiety in Eighteenth-CenturyVeniceInstitutional Reform and the Res Publica of ForestsThe Venetian Moral Economy of NatureVenetian Discourses in a European ContextConclusionThe Three Trials of Pietro GavardoFinding Meaning in the ForestAppendixNotesGlossaryBibliographyWhat People are Saying About This
Takes environmental history into the streets and countryside of the Renaissance city-state. Appuhn brilliantly reveals how Venetian political anxieties yielded a remarkable system of forest conservation to promote civic virtue and regional governance. In the interplay between Venice’s crowded lagoons and sylvan hillsides, he overturns the old story of European scientific rationalism as the death of nature. An original and important work.
— Matthew Klingle, author of Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle
An extraordinary book that offers a fresh perspective to see Venice anew in both its materialist and ideological manifestations. Beyond Venice, it challenges readers to rethink a number of issues of broad interest to early modern history in general: state bureaucracies and economy, the production and reproduction of knowledge, and the relationship between humans and nature in theory and practice.
— John A. Marino, University of California at San Diego
Karl Appuhn’s study of Venetian efforts to control and manage their forests is a fascinating case study in the problems and politics of resource management. By carefully tracing the evolution of Venice’s attempts to control, harvest, and replenish its forests, Appuhn reconstructs a world of experts, bureaucrats, shipbuilders, and rural villagers who all recognized how vital a commodity trees were to an early modern state. An excellent and stimulating contribution to early environmental history.—Paula Findlen, Stanford University
An extraordinary book that offers a fresh perspective to see Venice anew in both its materialist and ideological manifestations. Beyond Venice, it challenges readers to rethink a number of issues of broad interest to early modern history in general: state bureaucracies and economy, the production and reproduction of knowledge, and the relationship between humans and nature in theory and practice.—John A. Marino, University of California at San Diego
Takes environmental history into the streets and countryside of the Renaissance city-state. Appuhn brilliantly reveals how Venetian political anxieties yielded a remarkable system of forest conservation to promote civic virtue and regional governance. In the interplay between Venice’s crowded lagoons and sylvan hillsides, he overturns the old story of European scientific rationalism as the death of nature. An original and important work.—Matthew Klingle, author of Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle
Karl Appuhn’s study of Venetian efforts to control and manage their forests is a fascinating case study in the problems and politics of resource management. By carefully tracing the evolution of Venice’s attempts to control, harvest, and replenish its forests, Appuhn reconstructs a world of experts, bureaucrats, shipbuilders, and rural villagers who all recognized how vital a commodity trees were to an early modern state. An excellent and stimulating contribution to early environmental history.
— Paula Findlen, Stanford University