Capitalism in Crisis:

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.