Abstract
Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice, John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore MD, 2009; 361 pp., 9780801892615, $48.00 (hbk)
In this 361-page book, which is sub-divided into six chapters, Karl Appuhn studies the history of the exploitation of the forests surrounding Renaissance Venice. He looks closely at the economic interests involved in the supply of wood to the capital before and after the appropriation of the Terraferma, which was more or less finished by 1424.
Wood was an important resource throughout the city’s history. The survival of Venetian industries (glass-makers, mints, forges), of the military and merchant navies, and of private workshops, was reliant on the regular supply of materials for construction and combustion. The timber supplies served both to heat and maintain the city, whose foundations were built on a network of wooden piles. Appuhn’s account covers different phases in the political and economic history of the Republic including the period between 1350 (when the first law was enacted to regulate the trade in oak) and 1792 (when an important and overdue administrative reform was initiated to control forestry resources).
The book’s first part examines local studies on the history of the exploitation of forest in the Venetian hinterland, an extremely varied landscape which included deciduous woods on the plains and in coastal regions, as well as vast coniferous forests in the mountains. On the basis of these studies, Appuhn reconstructs the complex hydrographical system which enabled the supply of wood for the capital and the deployment of the different types of wood. Appuhn identifies five different areas (lower Piave, Friuli, Istria, middle Piave and Cadore), to which must be added the forests of the border area surrounding Vicenza (Brenta, Astico-Bacchiglione) and the market of Padova, where large amounts of timber from abroad were amassed. The importance of the supply of timber was very well understood at the time, as can be seen from the contemporary papers of the superintendents and patrons of the Arsenal (Patroni e Provveditori all’Arsenale), which are preserved in Venice and show the regular inspections carried out on behalf of the Arsenal in the woods belonging to the Archdukes of Austria. The Austrians, who were especially active in Primiero, Livinallongo and Dobbiaco (territories belonging to the Tirol county) were important suppliers of raw materials between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and dealt with numerous merchants and Venetian patricians.
The book continues by exploring the competition between local and Venetian operators. Appuhn makes clear how difficult and ambivalent the relationships were between merchants, local communities and feudal lords. This idea aids the analysis of Venetian forestry policy, which is reconstructed in the subsequent chapters through sources mainly kept in the State Archive, the Correr Museum and the National Library of St Mark’s in Venice.
The book examines two aspects concerning the political instruments enacted by the state of Veneto. The first regards the conservation of the legacy of woodland. Venice was confronted with a wide range of practical, legal and institutional challenges in its need to exercise direct control over the most important forestry resources in the area. Appuhn analyses these challenges and the administrative logic that dominated Venetian efforts to monitor and manage local practices in relation to the exploitation of the forests. This involved a process which was carried out in the sixteenth century by reducing the competence of the magistracies responsible for control of combustible reserves in favour of those who controlled the reserves designated for the use of the Arsenal. Subsequently, Appuhn examines the problem of forestry administration, taking a closer look at the appearance on the scene of experts who gave preference to empirical observation based on land registry and map readings rather than to theory-based training.
This book is another link in a series of works carried out in the last few years which look at the forestry-related history of Venice, principally meaning the strategic importance of timber for the shipyards, the woods reserved for the supply of the Arsenal (the Cansiglio woods), the training and identity of the forestry staff, the waterways focused around Venice and mountain deforestation, which we owe mainly to Antonio Lazzarini. Appuhn positions his reconstruction at the centre of the debate around the history of the environment and draws attention to the Venetian case, leading to a more meaningful reflection on the nature of pre-modern European states. As he points out, this case appears to be of particular interest as, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, the Republic of Venice was the only European state to have already tried large-scale implementation of forestry conservation with the aid of a professional bureaucracy working exclusively in this field. Venice thus proved to be well ahead of northern European countries, which only much later encouraged and rationalized the cultivation and exploitation of their own woodland heritage.