This book investigates the economic, strategic, and political importance of forests in early modern and modern Europe and shows how struggles over this vital natural resource both shaped and reflected the ideologies and outcomes of France's long revolutionary period. Until the mid-nineteenth century, wood was the principal fuel for cooking and heating and the primary material for manufacturing worldwide and comprised every imaginable element of industrial, domestic, military, and maritime activity. Forests also provided essential pasturage. These multifaceted values made forests the subject...

This book investigates the bitterly contested development of environmental conservation in France from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, suggesting that conflicts over forests between the state, landowning elites, and the peasantry reflected escalating demand for this most vital of natural resources and shaped the country's revolutionary struggles.