Warde Paul, Ecology, Economy and State Formation in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, 568 pp., U.S.$99.00, ISBN 0-521-83192-X.

Extract

The early modern period has aptly been called the “wooden age,” when timber, directly or indirectly, provided most of the material underpinnings of European and other societies. Most scholars who have been interested in wood as a historical problem have approached it from the perspective of historical geography or landscape. In this new book, Paul Warde analyzes the economic and political dimensions of timber in early modern Germany. Focusing on the relatively small Duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany, Warde uses timber as a way to both map out the material constraints of life in early modern communities, and to undertake an analysis of state development that moves away from abstract categories such as sovereignty and authority, and toward the concrete problems faced by rulers and bureaucrats as they sought to regulate crucial aspects of everyday life. In so doing, Warde seeks to situate local and regional communities within a well-defined ecological context so as to understand better the kinds of economic choices that early modern Europeans, like other pre-modern people, faced. This is something that environmental historians like to talk about at great length, even though they often neglect it in practice. To his credit, Warde puts his analysis where his mouth is.