Book description
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,…
Why read it?
1 author picked A Forest on the Sea as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love this book because it does such a masterful job of demonstrating how peoples, states, and the natural environment are closely linked with one another.
The book is about early modern Venice and its mainland empire, its immense and constant need for wood, and the state’s efforts to ensure that need could be sustainably met in both the near and distant future. The Venetians came to understand nature through the careful conservation of a vital but fragile resource, and their government developed to meet that challenge.
Over four centuries Venice created a unique bureaucracy of forestry and forest management,…
From Eric's list on early modern environmental history.
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