A forest on the sea : environmental expertise in Renaissance Venice

Winner, Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, American Historical AssociationWinner, Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award, the Forest History Society 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.

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.

The idea of a Venetian forestry service might strike one as the beginning of a joke. The statement that it began in the fourteenth century would surprise most people. Venice is built on a lagoon with no timber resources. This book reveals the story of Venice's attempt to establish protected forests in order to have a constant supply of wood. Beyond the need for wood for heating and cooking, tall beams of oak and beech were needed for ship building and the shoring up of breakwaters that kept the sea from flooding the city. The author follows the practice of forest conservation and management from its inception in the 1300s to the end of the eighteenth century. He details the administrative and legal debates as well as problems with the implementation of policies. This study is a corrective to histories that assume a lack of interest in forest conservation in Europe at this time. The experience of the Venetians also serves as an example for timber use and conservation today Frontmatter List of Tables and Figures (page vii) Acknowledgments (page ix) Note on Dates (page xi) Introduction (page 1) 1 Forest Exploitation before the Venetian Conquest (page 20) 2 The Venetian Discovery of Mainland Forests (page 58) 3 Venetian Forestry Laws and the Creation of Public Forest Reserves (page 94) 4 The Venetian Forest Bureaucracy (page 144) 5 The Preservation and Reproduction of Bureaucratic Knowledge (page 195) 6 Nature's Republic or Republican Nature? (page 248) Conclusion (page 289) Appendix (page 303) Notes (page 305) Glossary (page 331) Bibliography (page 333) Index (page 353)