A forest on the sea : environmental expertise in Renaissance Venice / Karl Appuhn.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-329) and index.

Forest Exploitation before the Venetian Conquest. Venetian Demand for Forest Products ; Regional Forest Ecologies and the Venetian Timber Supply ; Local Practices of Forest Exploitation and Venetian Shortages ; Perceived Shortages and the Emergence of the Market Hierarchy -- The Venetian Discovery of Mainland Forests. Water Management and Venetian Interpretations of Mainland Landscapes ; Local Property Rights and the Limits of Venetian Power to Preserve Forests ; The Failure of Market Regulations -- Venetian Forestry Laws and the Creation of Public Forest Reserves. The Creation of the Boschi Pubblici ; The 1476 Forestry Laws and the Hierarchy of Forest Utilization ; The Cambrai Crisis, Fiscal Reform, and the Expansion of the State Reserves ; The Expansion of Forestry Legislation and Its Consequences -- The Venetian Forest Bureaucracy. A Divided Bureaucracy ; A New Role for the Provveditori alle Legne ; Sixteenth-Century Forest Surveys ; Harvests, Local Resistance, and Perceptions of Scarcity ; The Catastico Garzoni and the Knowledge Gap -- The Preservation and Reproduction of Bureaucratic Knowledge. Venetian Bureaucratic Expertise ; The Cadastral Surveys and the Preservation of Collective Knowledge ; The Cadastral Surveys as Natural Historical Narrative ; Topographical Maps and the Reproduction of Knowledge -- Nature's Republic or Republican Nature? Peak Demand and Peak Anxiety in Eighteenth-Century Venice ; Institutional Reform and the Res Publica of Forests ; The Venetian Moral Economy of Nature ; Venetian Discourses in a European Context -- Conclusion. The Three Trials of Pietro Gavardo ; Finding Meaning in the Forest.