The Tree Experts: a history of professional arboriculture in Britain

Abstract

been influential, even within royal forests (which relied upon the co-operation of local people), and state forestry’, something all too often ignored by forest environmental historians. In France, there was an unprecedented shortage of wood in the early modern era, with lay and ecclesiastical communities, individuals, wood merchants, barons, and even the king, competing for supplies. While this led to new laws in 1661 and the Great Ordnance of 1669, it seems these were not so new as once thought but reflected earlier control and recognised ‘people’s profound attachment to and identification with their forests’ (p. 248). Increased measures were also taken in English forests during the seventeenth century but once again scholars have underestimated the role of earlier forest courts (declining at the end of the Middle Ages). The vert had been conserved for the deer while ensuring that the monarch had access to a regular supply of timber for the construction and repairs to royal residences, park fences, hunting lodges, mills, and bridges, plus fuel wood, requiring good stewardship: ‘Both time-honoured customary practice and state intervention were vital to the survival of the English woods in the seventeenth century as demands escalated’ (p. 259). Such measures reinforced and enhanced methods that had been practiced throughout medieval times. These often involved enclosure after felling to all natural regeneration — an important factor in woods used as wood-pasture. In SchleswigHolstein the over-exploitation of woodlands that has been argued to have occurred by the late eighteenth century, giving rise to further legislation, had however been controlled in some regions much earlier and at least by the mid-sixteenth century when forest reeves were employed to supervise ‘authorized logging’, but ultimately not sufficient to preserve woodland. Finally, in East-Central Europe, and mainly in the Czech Republic, although some traditional practices such as coppicing and wood-pasturing were often rejected in the nineteenth and twentieth century they have since been reintroduced. Thus before issues of conservation and sus tainability became a recognised aim of environmental protection many measures had already been part of standard traditional practice for a long time, whether carried out by local communities or overlords. Many had been based upon the need to avert resource scarcity. These are no means, in practise, terms conjured up in modern times. Sustainability now, however, maybe deliberately also ‘orientated toward the future’ — a feature of both ‘history and destiny’. This is a timely and important, if expensive book, a study covering many countries and examining deepseated attitudes to conservation and sustainability.