Professor Kieko Matteson will give a talk exploring the long history of struggle over France's forests between the 17th and 19th centuries. Control over forests was critically important as wood was France's main resource for energy, buildings, tools, and transportation. Matteson will discuss tensions between customary community management of forests, state conservation initiatives, and growing industrial demands. These conflicts influenced French rural politics during the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, and went on to shape global environmental policymaking and France's current landscape.
Professor Kieko Matteson will give a talk exploring the long history of struggle over France's forests between the 17th and 19th centuries. Control over forests was critically important as wood was France's main resource for energy, buildings, tools, and transportation. Matteson will discuss tensions between customary community management of forests, state conservation initiatives, and growing industrial demands. These conflicts influenced French rural politics during the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, and went on to shape global environmental policymaking and France's current landscape.
Professor Kieko Matteson will give a talk exploring the long history of struggle over France's forests between the 17th and 19th centuries. Control over forests was critically important as wood was France's main resource for energy, buildings, tools, and transportation. Matteson will discuss tensions between customary community management of forests, state conservation initiatives, and growing industrial demands. These conflicts influenced French rural politics during the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, and went on to shape global environmental policymaking and France's current landscape.
Professor Kieko Matteson will give a talk exploring the long history of struggle over France's forests between the 17th and 19th centuries. Control over forests was critically important as wood was France's main resource for energy, buildings, tools, and transportation. Matteson will discuss tensions between customary community management of forests, state conservation initiatives, and growing industrial demands. These conflicts influenced French rural politics during the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, and went on to shape global environmental policymaking and France's current landscape.
Development, Sustainability, & Inequality in Global Perspective (2014-2015)
Forests in Revolutionary France
Community Sustainability vs. State Conservation: 1669 1848
Professor Kieko Matteson
Environmental History University of Hawaii
Friday April 24; 2:30-4:00pm
History Department Library 2530 Dole Street, Sakamaki Hall A201 In this talk, Kieko Matteson explores the long, often violent history of struggle between state and local stakeholders over France's forests in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In an age when wood constituted the single most vital natural resource -- both as the country's main form of energy and as the essential ingredient of buildings, tools, and transportation on land and sea -- the question of who would control access to France's forests and for what ends was a matter of critical social, political, and economic importance. Drawing on research she conducted for her first book, Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Matteson will discuss the rising tensions between customary modes of woodland management, state conservation initiatives, and the growing demands of industry. These conflicts not only influenced French rural politics in the revolutions of 1789 and 1848; they also informed later environmental policymaking around the globe and continue to shape France's physical landscape in the present day.