‘We shall use words like ‘live-oakery’ and ‘pinery’ to mean an area of trees, without committing ourselves to whether it was forest, savanna or maquis. It is essential to read the original documents and not to trust others’ translations and interpretations’.1
This statement comes from the book by Alfred T. Grove and Oliver Rackham, who specifically highlight the importance of being careful about the meanings given to some words, because they are not always obvious. The Spanish words monte and bosque and the Portuguese mata are clear examples of this. In our minds (the writers of this introduction) the word ‘monte’ has been equated to ‘woodland’,2 which nowadays refers to bosque/forest, understood as a landscape covered with trees. One of the original purposes of this book was to try to put together a history of the concepts of ‘royal forest’, ‘forest’ and ‘woodland’ that were used by Early Modern societies and monarchies on the Iberian Peninsula.
The task seemed difficult enough to start off with, but it turned out to be downright impossible to compile a history of the concepts listed in this introduction, despite the fact that some of them are paramount to all the contributions. The decision not to pursue this avenue stemmed partially from a lack of knowledge of the land uses and landscapes of the inhabitants of the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula, especially the areas with a Mediterranean climate. Although it may be argued that historical records provide insights, they are not sufficient. The Spanish and Portuguese Crowns have provided misleading impressions about the landscapes, land uses, and, very likely, the daily life of the local societies. These impressions derived from the tunnel vision of the Iberian Crowns,3 which caused their officers and administrative bodies to
However, there is a bright side. The quality and variety of the contributions to this book have surpassed the editor’s original aims. The Iberian Peninsula is diverse and complex in its ecosystems, climate, and societies. These complexities are multiplied when coupled with the different human societies, ecosystems and climates. Therefore, historical analyses necessarily need to approach human–nature interactions from multiple perspectives, not solely from multiple disciplines. On many occasions, this demand for a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary approach has led to bias or failed to take into account the slow pace of historical research based on primary sources, especially, but not only, archival resources. It is very likely that scientific contributions based primarily on archival sources are currently not very popular, but they can hold their own when challenging established narratives.
There is a very large body of literature that has approached the human-nature interrelations of the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula from the perspective of an ongoing destruction of the woodlands.4 Although a detailed state of the art on this matter goes beyond the purposes and possibilities of this introduction, it is worth noting the contribution of Grove and Rackham to unravelling some of the strands of the theory of ‘ruined landscapes’ or a ‘lost Eden’, according to which the human societies of the Mediterranean basin basically destroyed nature, especially woodlands, whose devastation, so they claimed, triggered soil erosion, floods and desertification.5
It is very likely that part of this narrative stemmed from the well-known Physical Geography (1861) of John Frederick W. Herschel, who stated that one of the reasons for the aridity of inland Spain was the lack of vegetation, especially trees. Without providing any evidence, he plainly stated that ‘the hatred of a Spaniard towards a tree is proverbial.’6
In 1864, George P. Marsh not only reproduced the statement about Spaniards’ pathological hatred of trees, but went one step further when he asserted that Spain had been the only European country that had not adopted policies for
Carl von Berg, the director of the Tharandt Forestry School (near Dresden, Germany), also mentioned the idea of the hatred of trees among Spaniards, who were believed to be more interested in pasture and agriculture than in woodlands.12 Curiously enough, it was during the 1860s and 1870s that so-called Modern Silviculture was introduced to Portugal by Bernardino Barros Gomes, who had studied at the Tharandt School. Under the principle of ‘repairing and improving’, Martín de los Heros, the intendent of the Spanish royal household, was aware of the need to give a scientific orientation to the management of the royal sites and decided to fund two scholarships at the Tharandt School in late 1842.13 He was by no means the only Spanish or Portuguese forester trained in this school, as German forestry was the principal source of knowledge for Spanish and Portuguese silviculturists.14 The application of the idea of forest
In 1911, Bernhard E. Fernow stated that Spain was a wealthy country during the Middle Ages but had turned into a desert by the early twentieth century ‘through neglect, indolence, ignorance, false pride, lack of communal spirit, despotism of church, and misrule by a corrupt bureaucracy.’17 More surprisingly, he concluded that Spain lacked woodlands even though the official Spanish statistics stated otherwise.18 His misunderstanding of the Mediterranean ecosystems becomes obvious when he addressed the case of Portugal, ten percent of which was covered with forests, half of which could not be regarded as woodland because they ‘are wooded with olive, fig, almond plantations, or open woodlands [probably the savanna-like dehesas or montados] and brushwood.’19 He continued to express these biases towards the montados and dehesas or wood-pastures in the following pages, concluding that the pinewood of Leiria was the only well managed forest in Portugal.20 In this connection, Grove and Rackham have correctly stated that savannas are categorized as ‘degraded forest’ without evidence that they are not, in fact, grassland that has become invaded by trees.21 Traces of this narrative are even found in more recent publications. To mention but a few authors, in 1981 J. V. Thirgood commenced his book on the destruction of the Mediterranean forest by quoting George P. Marsh. His research continues the narrative popularized
The implications of such negative statements extended beyond the woodlands to the management of natural resources, as well as to political management. The management of natural resources and the landscapes societies produced were viewed as a reflection of their social and political organization. Largely to justify their own socio-political system, nineteenth-century authors tended to disregard former political organizations, including the Early Modern socio-political organization based on a multiplicity of powers and corporations that clashed with the liberal conception, according to which all the powers were concentrated in the state. These historians thus praised the liberal state project and dismissed Early Modern plurality and corporativism.24 The Court was the main political organization of the Early Modern period, but differed greatly from the State as we know it today.
Multiplicity and heterogeneity were present in several elements throughout the Early Modern period. Ignacio Ezquerra Revilla’s essay evidences how the articulation of the court jurisdiction at the royal sites was a ‘complex patchwork’ whose negative analysis has resulted from ‘a biased view of the concept [court] that is more focused on aspects of magnificence such as the pomp and cultural traces associated with palace life, the solemnity and ceremonial duties related to the royal person, or the role played by the nobility’.25 This arose from a negative vision created by 19th-century writers who set out to justify the new political regime based on the nation-state and citizenship. They regarded Early modern courts and royal sites as simply the royal palaces where the kings, royal family and the courts were based, overlooking the multifaceted realities of the royal sites.26 As José Eloy Hortal Muñoz notes from a spatial
The simplification of the political and administrative realities also extended to landscapes. Landscapes that were not given over to agriculture, forestry, or cattle exclusively but resulted from various land uses in the same land unit were often disregarded. It is likely that this contempt arose from the need (or conviction) to justify the superiority of private property devoted mainly to one marketable economic activity backed by a strong central liberal state. Bastias Saavedra recently stated that land ownership and land use in the Early Modern Iberian Empires needs to go beyond the discussion between commons and private property.28 The interrelations between ‘cultivation, enclosure and improvement of the land could generate property rights’ dating back at least to John Locke.29
The contribution by Alfredo José Martínez González demonstrates that from the early 19th century, the Spanish liberals aimed to disband the Ancien Regime ‘in accordance with the demands of a revolutionary bourgeoisie who were socially two sided: on the one hand, they advocated freeing workers so that their strength and activity could be harnessed; on the other hand, they encouraged the expropriation of land rights in favour of private property’.30 The bourgeoisie relied on private property that, in turn, would have brought about prosperity and development (economic growth of the country). Therefore, it was necessary to eliminate all the obstacles to freely enjoying private property, including, but not only, communal rights.31 Enclosures and private properties were regarded as catalysts of prosperity and they were legally implemented across different land tenures, ecosystems, and land uses.32 Congost correctly pointed out that Early Modern societies had regarded the ‘commons’ both as commons and individuals.33
Similarly, Warde noted that 19th-century German Forestry had its roots in 17th-century cameralism.38 Concerning woodlands, cameralism aimed to achieve the same wood production every year without diminishing the woodlands by means of scientific calculations and standardization. This idea caught on not only among foresters but also among ‘general cameralist works on the fiscal state […] notably in the work of Johan Heinrich Gottlied von Justi in the 1750s and 1760s’. The purpose of the management was straightforwardly to work out how much ‘wood can be annually felled sustainably, economically and without ruin to the woodlands’.39 Thus, the cameralists and foresters preferred tree species whose growth could be easily predicted, which led to the creation of the ‘normal tree’, the Normalbaum; and ‘the forest became the aggregate of the individual tree’.40
This landscape design simplified the complex natural, social and political reality of Early Modern Culture. It is likely that from the perspective of Cameralist Science and German scientific forestry, agriculture, forestry, and cattle were not compatible economic activities in the same land unit, which had led to their spatial separation. Early Modern socio-ecological realities were far more complex, and so were land uses, as Bastias Saavedra has recently pointed
In the past few decades some researchers in the fields of natural sciences (mainly ecology and biology) and social sciences (geography) have claimed that humans have not only had a positive impact on the sustainability and resilience of the Mediterranean ecosystems, but have sometimes even contributed to enhancing biodiversity.42 Early modern land-use practices resembled what we refer to nowadays as ‘an agroforestry system’. Agroforestry system is the new name given to an age-old land-use practice where trees are combined with agricultural and/or livestock activities.43 Agroforestry systems have three main attributes: productivity, adoptability, and sustainability.44 A recent study has assessed the environmental and economic services provided by European landscapes with and without agroforestry systems. The findings of the article are clear: the agroforestry systems of the Mediterranean region are not only economically more profitable than the agricultural systems, but also provide more environmental services. Conversely, the economic profitability and environmental advantages of agroforestry systems are less obvious in Atlantic and Continental Europe.45
In this connection, dehesas and montados are some of the most characteristic agroforestry systems of the Mediterranean region. Montados and dehesas or savanna-like landscapes have been studied by scholars, who have found cork oaks (Quercus suber) and holm oaks (Quercus ilex) to be the best adapted and most representative tree species of the montados or dehesas. These agro-silvo-pastoral systems or agroforestry systems are manmade landscapes, and they are good examples of sustainability, resilience, and biodiversity conservation. The conservation or sustainability of montados or dehesas was attained through
It is very likely that the key point for sustainable land use and resource management of the Mediterranean region is to find the ‘intermediate disturbance’ of the human impact on the environment, of which the agro-silvo-pastoral systems of the montados and dehesas are a paramount example.47 For us, the historians who have spent several years working with primary sources, it makes sense to think that Early Modern Iberian societies put the same land unit to multiple uses (agriculture, wood products, grazing or pasture land), but our discourse does not employ the terminology used by the so-called hard or accurate science. Ofelia Rey Castelao’s essay on the woodlands of Galicia48 and Álvaro Aragón Ruano’s studies on forestry policies in Early Modern Gipuzkoa that brought about a change in the forest landscape due to different management techniques are but a few.49
These two studies are based on the Atlantic climate region of the Iberian Peninsula, but there are countless examples of how the multiple land uses that characterize agroforestry systems were normal practice in the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula across periods and types of land tenure.50 The fact is that these authors’ studies do not employ the terminology used in the fields
The essay by Francisco Fernández Izquierdo and Francisco J. Moreno Díaz del Campo discusses a significant example of sixteenth-century dehesas, savanna-type landscapes combined with pasture and agriculture that were neither royal sites nor private property: they enjoyed a ‘special status halfway between the Royal Woodlands and the Woodlands of the Realm. They were directly managed by royal officials and monitored by administrators or foresters, who were in charge of enforcing regulations specifically designed to protect, maintain, and increase the natural resources that directly or indirectly benefited the Crown. The particular features of these wooded areas and the demarcation of open spaces where trees of the oak family – Quercus robur, ilex, and suber, which yielded acorns, firewood and timber – grew side by side with grasses and dryland crops were a key element of that policy’.52 Similarly, the contribution of Félix Labrador Arroyo demonstrated how at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century the royal site of La Florida had dispersed trees, which were integrated into a land unit with agriculture and cattle. Whereas agriculture was of high importance, the administrators consciously integrated agriculture and cattle to improve the economic viability of this space, which was deeply impacted by the war.
Consequently, while the Iberian Peninsula includes different climates and land tenures, both the Crown and the local inhabitants purposely integrated (either from a bottom-up or a top-down approach) different land uses into the same land unit. This reality was perfectly reflected in the Ensenada Cadastre, a survey drawn up in mid-eighteenth-century Spain, as the contribution of Ángel Ignacio Aguilar Cuesta, Ana Luna San Eugenio and Concepción Camarero Bullón evidence. Rather than mere woodlands, the responses to the questionnaire noted that the wooded areas were key for the peasant economy across different land -tenures and climates of Spain. The absence of a question that directly addressed woodlands did not mean that woodlands were overlooked. Rather, it is a reflection of how wooded areas were integrated with other
Therefore, one of the main contributions of this book is to continue overturning the idea of the Iberian royal sites as places of economic squandering, corruption, and mismanagement.54 From the 15th to the 19th centuries the royal sites and palaces played a major role in the social, political and cultural organization of the European dynastic monarchies.55 These spaces were not only residences for the monarchs and their court but also centres of power and administration, places of representation with symbols that conveyed an image of monarchs’ magnificence and authority through the use of architecture, painting, sculpture, gardens, and fountains, among other features. They attested to a domination of nature and an ability to create beauty and order and made it posible to tell the story of the dynasty and of the policy aimed at playing a significant role in building the royal image and shaping a rhetoric of power.56
These spaces were likewise heavily ritualized and hierarchized by a barrage of rules and etiquette that regulated life there and the image they were to convey through ceremonies and royal imagery where every single detail was designed to underline the monarchs’ authority and prestige.57 They unquestionably reflected the evolution of the monarchy’s political organization, and
María del Pilar García Rodríguez and Beatriz Álvarez García have noted that the royal sites in the provinces of Madrid and Segovia have played a major role in the conservation of the environment.60 These spaces were not only areas managed for leisure activities but also had an economic output such as agriculture, grazing, wood commodities.61 The great majority of the Spanish royal sites were economically exploited from the outset: mainly agriculture and forestry to cover part of their upkeep. For instance, timber for the fleet, artillery gun carriages, and royal works in the Alhambra complex was extracted from the Soto de Roma in Granada, while the Juanelo Turriano mill on the river Tagus was maintained out of the revenues of the country estate (Cigarral) in Toledo, and the fruit and vegetables grown in the gardens and orchards of the Casa de Campo were used by the palace kitchens and surpluses were sold in the Madrid markets.62
However, in the case of the Spanish Monarchy, the royal site of Aranjuez is the best example of economic rationality. This point is highlighted in the introduction not only because of its uniqueness, but also because this volume does not include a specific contribution revolving around this royal site. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the royal site of Aranjuez was not only conceived as an unit of agricultural production, but also generated income that was used to fund other royal sites.63 Greater prominence was given to this economic aspect during the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746–1759) by his minister, the
Notable among the new crop farming initiatives carried out at Aranjuez were the Cortijo de San Isidro at Aranjuez, with grapevines and olive bushes; the Jardín de los Deleites, where fruit and vegetables and vines were grown; and the Campo Flamenco, on the left bank of the River Tagus. Projects in other areas included the Huerta Valenciana where vines were dry farmed, as well as the Infantas and Mira el Rey and the extensión of the Serrano and Castillejo estates.66 Similarly, the Casa de Campo in Madrid was given a greater productive emphasis with dry-farmed crops, vegetable gardens, vines, fruit tres and olive groves, and pursuant to a royal decree of 3 April 1761 the Albufera in Valencia, one of the most productive and representative estates of the
As far as livestock farming is concerned, notable among other cases are the construction in 1762–63 of the dairy (casa de vacas) established chiefly to supply butter and milk to the court and to sell surplus production on the market, based on the model of the Reale Vaccheria di Alifreda founded at Caserta (Campania, Italy); the introduction of buffalos in the Casa de Villamayor in Aranjuez to produce mozzarella; and the encouragement of horse breeding by building the Sotomayor stables in 1761 and the subsequent division of the royal stud farm into three sections. The first of these sections, the Andalusian, was geared to breeding saddle horses; the second, the Neapolitan or draft horse farm, concentrated on Friesian horses; and the third bred mules and stud jackasses.68
Greater attention was likewise paid to conservation and forestry at the royal sites. A notable development is the ordinance of 15 October 1761 for the administration of the royal pinewoods of Valsaín, Pirón and Riofrío,69 which highlighted the transformation of a royal space: San Ildefonso, which was essentially a luxurious palatial residence surrounded by a large hunting ground until 1760 and thereafter also became a major source of forest products. The contributions of Koldo Trapaga-Monchet and Félix Labrador Arroyo in this essay provide two examples of the materiality of the royal sites in Portugal (the pinewood of Leiria from 1580 to 1640), and of the royal site of La Florida in the late 18th century and early 19th century.
However, although this book focuses especially on the royal forests of the Iberian Peninsula, we have deliberately included essays that: 1) show how the idea of conservation was embedded in State forestry policies, as well as reflected in the landscapes that resulted from multiple land uses across different land tenures; 2) confirm the idea that jurisdictional and institutional mechanisms played a major role in the shaping of the royal sites as patchworks as complex as the landscapes of Early Modern Iberia; 3) make it possible to understand the concepts of ‘royal site’ and ‘royal forest’. The following section accordingly describes the contents of the book in greater detail.
1
Early Modern sovereigns relied on legislation and their administrative staff to enforce their objectives on the ground.70 However, the Early Modern Period was characterized by multiple conflicting and overlapping jurisdictions, which are of great importance to understanding the strategies and objectives pursued by Iberian sovereigns with respect to the royal sites. Although this is a highly complex task, in his contribution Ignacio Ezquerra Revilla unravels the articulation of the jurisdiction of the royal sites during Philip II’s reign as a complex patchwork. Spanish kings exercised over the royal sites a more restricted jurisdiction which was embedded in the Junta de Obras y Bosques and, due to the corporate nature of the Spanish Monarchy, often clashed with other jurisdictions. The author provides extensive archival evidence of the interdependences between the alcaldes de casa y corte (judges of the royal household and court) who were responsible to the Royal Council of Castille and the jueces de bosque (judges of the forests) with respect to the creation and consolidation of the restrictive and special jurisdiction of the royal sites of the Early Modern Spanish Monarchy in the kingdom of Castile.
José Eloy Hortal Muñoz’s contribution provides a thought-provoking framework for studying the royal forests and woodlands of the Spanish Monarchy, which are addressed from the perspective of territory, because it is a key element in the making of the term ‘Royal Geographies’ that the author coined. This conceptual framework facilitated the complex reality of the royal sites of the Early Modern Spanish Monarchy as it embraced palaces, forests, woodlands, stables, royal archives, and even a mint. After explaining the general approach, the author examines in depth the importance of the royal forests and woodlands in enhancing and consolidating the presence and power of the sovereign over the territory, as well as providing an overview of the multiple material outputs of the different royal forests and woodlands. Nevertheless, the core of this article revolves around the different offices entrusted with taking care of the royal forests and woodlands linked to the Junta de Obras y Bosques (board of works and woodlands): their nature, the tasks they involved, who held them, and how the social status of the incumbents evolved from the late 1500s and throughout the 1600s. This analysis helps understand the role
The essay by Alfredo José Martínez González addresses the implementation and evolution of the institutional mechanisms put in place by the Spanish Monarchy to establish a sustainable forestry system for the conservation of the woodlands of Northern Spain for imperial shipbuilding from the reign of Philip II (1556–98) to the Cortes of Cádiz (1808–14) when the Ancien Regime was abolished in Spain. Beginning in the early 1560s, Philip II reinforced the activity of the local and central governing bodies. During the 1560s and 1570s, a forestry management system was introduced in an attempt to harmonize the felling of trees with the planting of new ones throughout the north of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in the principality of Catalonia. Among other measures, this resulted in the founding of the Superintendencia de Montes y Plantíos, the institution that for nearby two centuries held responsibility for ensuring the conservation of the existing woodlands and guaranteeing that the local institutions complied with the obligations of plantings in Atlantic Spain (from Galicia to Gipuzkoa). Whereas at first the Spanish Crown focused on the provinces of Biscay and Gipuzkoa, from the late sixteenth century onwards the institution spanned the entire Cantabrian area. The next step forward made by the Superintendencia de Montes y Plantíos occurred in the mid-seventeenth century when Toribio Pérez Bustamante drew up a new set of regulations that can be regarded as a precedent for what came to be known as sustainable development centuries later. Subsequently, the author surveys the forest management institutions during the Bourbon dynasty with the benchmark of the Ordinance of 1748, until the disbandment of the Montes of Marina (woodlands designated for naval construction) during the Cortes of Cádiz.
As has been mentioned, this book sets out to demonstrate the idea that the sustainability – as well as the resilience – of the Mediterranean ecosystems was achieved through the convergence of agricultural, livestock, and forestry land uses in the same land-unit management: what it is known as agroforestry systems. The idea of conservation to meet societies’ material needs went beyond the municipalities, encompassing different land tenures throughout the Early Modern Period. The contribution of Francisco Fernández Izquierdo and Francisco Javier Moreno Díaz del Campo unravels the implementation of management methods and systems for agricultural, animal and wood resources in three selected case studies: Alcobaça, Otos and Aceca, Zacatena, which were managed by the Council for the Military Orders (Consejo de las Órdenes Militares) from the early sixteenth century onwards. Although the authors mainly look at forestry resources, they correctly highlight the fact that these spaces were chiefly used as sources of pastureland and agriculture.
Koldo Trapaga-Monchet’s contribution revolves around the royal pinewood of Leiria during the Habsburg period (1580–1640). Although the pinewood of Leiria is the best-known woodland in Portuguese forestry, until a few years ago its history prior to the eighteenth century had hardly been explored. Therefore, this essay begins with a description of the administrative staff and forest policies issued by the Portuguese Crown from the early sixteenth century in order to introduce the period from 1580 to 1640, which is analysed by combining existing literature and archival and cartographical sources with a document that was hitherto unknown, but has revealed new insights on the history of the pinewood. The two fires of 1613 triggered a harsh response from the Portuguese Crown, which conducted major inquiries to clarify their origins, and also had long-standing administrative and management consequences. All the members of the administrative staff were dismissed for two years, and the Crown built new firebreaks alongside the pinewood. This essay furthermore provides new insights into the following aspects of the pinewood of Leiria from 1580 to 1640: 1) the administrative staff of the pinewood; 2) the evolution of the supply and prices of timber for the royal navy; 3) the relations between the Crown officers and local inhabitants with respect to the administration and protection of the pinewood; and 4) social and ecological constraints on timber for imperial shipbuilding supplied from the pinewood of Leiria to the Lisbon dockyard.
A huge amount of literature in the fields of the humanities and social and natural sciences has blamed imperial shipbuilding for being the main agent of forest depletion in Early Modern Portugal. Whereas the majority of such studies are qualitative analyses, the contribution by Raúl Romero-Calcerrada and Koldo Trapaga-Monchet breaks away from existing scholarship by bringing a quantitative approach to this discussion. Theirs is an interdisciplinary contribution, as it combines GIS, historical and cartographical sources with the approach of Integrated Suitability for Tree Species, building three-layer interconnected research in order to evaluate the sustainability of forest resource management and human activity (shipbuilding) on these resources. The authors begin with a cartographical proposal that envisages the geographic space covered by the monteiro-mor ordinance of 1605. This makes it possible, secondly, to estimate the forest area and number of homegrown trees available per year to supply the Pinus pinea, Pinus pinaster and Quercus suber timber
The dynamics of the Early Modern Iberian Peninsula during the eighteenth century are addressed in three contributions. Firstly, the essay by Ángel Ignacio Aguilar Cuesta, Ana Luna San Eugenio and Concepción Camarero Bullón delves into the importance of the woodlands in the peasant economy of mid-eighteenth-century Spain through the analysis of the so-called Catastro de la Ensenada (Ensenada Cadastre). The authors remind us of the importance of bearing in mind that the Ensenada Cadastre is a large array of documents with different territorial levels, different purposes, and differing degrees of data aggregation. They have mainly worked with the Respuestas Generales (general answers), Memoriales (declarations), and Libros de lo real (records of real estate) of which they provide a useful description before moving onto their case studies that encompasses different geographical areas of large parts of Spain (i.e., current provinces of Almeria, Burgos, Jaén, Lugo, Madrid, Soria). This first-hand information clearly demonstrates the importance of woodlands in the socio-economic structure of the local inhabitants, mainly as part of larger land-use structures and different landscapes which included agriculture, wood-pasture and uncultivated lands. This essay furthermore provides new data on several elements such as forest management, land-use patterns, tree biodiversity, planting policies, and the interrelations between the local municipalities and the State on the supply of materials for imperial shipbuilding. All these sets of data demonstrate that Spain was far from being desertified due to a lack of woodlands.
The so-called Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755 largely destroyed the city of Lisbon, severely damaging the Portuguese fleet. Although the earthquake and its aftermath has been studied extensively, Cristina Joanaz de Melo’s contribution sheds light on new aspects. Firstly, this book chapter evidences how the most urgent wood-related demands were met by domestic supplies, as the colonies were too far away to be reached rapidly. After outlining the methodological and conceptual approaches, the essay moves onto its core idea: that the Lisbon earthquake triggered a chain of new political programmes led by the Marquis of Pombal that landscaped Portugal. The economic and political
The history of the royal site (real sitio) of La Florida is unravelled by Félix Labrador Arroyo’s contribution. Although this royal site is of secondary importance if compared with the well-known royal sites of Aranjuez or El Escorial, this case study is particularly relevant to the main hypothesis outlined in this introduction. This essay begins by surveying the establishment and expansion of La Florida from the late 1780s up to early years of the nineteenth century through the acquisition of diverse lands that belonged to private individuals. The royal site of La Florida was located near the royal palace of Madrid and was created in part to ensure the territorial continuity of the royal properties of the Casa de Campo and the Monte de El Pardo. This contribution not only demonstrates that the Spanish monarch – or more likely his ministers – had good first-hand knowledge of the territory surrounding the royal palace of Madrid, but also proves that there was a rational economic management based on the combination of agricultural and livestock production with wood and forest resources. The large array of archival sources provides insights on the land uses that combined agriculture, livestock, orchards, and forest products to a lesser extent, as well as the evolution of the expenditures and income of La Florida before and during the French invasion.
Acknowledgements
This contribution has benefited from the research projects ‘Protection, production and environmental change: the roots of Modern Environmentalism in the Iberian Peninsula (XVI–XVIIIth centuries)’ of Gerda Henkel Stiftüng (project reference AZ 60/V/19) and ‘Madrid: real y cortesano’ funded within the Call of 2024 ‘Ayudas a Proyectos de I+D realizados en colaboración entre grupos de investigación pertenecientes a las universidades y organismos de investigación
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García Pereda, Ignacio. Experts Florestais: Os primeiros silvicultores em Portugal. PhD dissertation: Universidade de Évora, 2018.
García Rodríguez, María del Pilar and Beatriz Álvarez García. “Preservación del medio natural en los Reales Sitios del entorno de Madrid”, Investigaciones Científicas 76 (2021), 221–242.
Grove, Alfred T., and Oliver Rackham. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Herschel, John F. W. Physical Geography. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1861.
Hespanha, António Manuel. As vésperas do Leviathan. Instituições e poder político. Portugal (séc. XVII). Lisbon: Pedro Ferreira, 1987, 2 vols.
Hortal Muñoz, José Eloy. “Los Sitios Reales como elementos clave de las monarquías europeas de la edad Moderna: una aproximación”, Studia Histórica. Historia Moderna 42/2 (2020), 197–217. 10.14201/shhmo2020422197217.
Hortal Muñoz José Eloy and Merlijn Hurx (eds.). Building the Presence of the Prince: The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th–17th centuries). Turnhout: Brepols, 2024.
Kay, Sonia et al. “Agroforestry is paying off – Economic evaluation of ecosystem services in European landscapes with and without agroforestry systems,” Ecosystem services 36 (2019): 1–10.
Labrador Arroyo, Félix and Koldo Trapaga-Monchet. “La configuración del espacio y la explotación forestal de un enclave singular: el Real Sitio del Soto de Roma durante la dinastía Hasburgo”, Studia Histórica, Histora Moderna 39, nº 2 (2017), 293–327.
Labrador Arroyo, Félix and Koldo Trapaga-Monchet. “Recursos hídricos y forestales en la Europa mediterránea (siglos XV–XIX),” special issue of the journal Manuscrits. Revista d’Història Moderna 42 (2020).
Labrador Arroyo, Félix and Magdalena Merlos Romero. “Introducción.” In Pragmatismo e ilusión: El agua y la gestión del espacio y territorio en Aranjuez y otros sitios cortesanos (siglos XVI–XIX), directed by Félix Labrador Arroyo and Magdalena Merlos Romero, 15–23. Madrid: Sílex, 2023.
Melo, Cristina Joanaz de (coord.). Como a Fénix Renascida. Matas, bosques e arvoredos (séculos XVI–XX): representações, gestão, fruição. Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2020.
Melo, Cristina Joanaz de. “Floresta em movimiento: usar, regenerar, cuidar (séculos XIV–XIX).” Como Fénix Renascida – Matas, bosques e arvoredos (séculos XVI–XX). Representações, gestão, fruição, coordinated by Cristina Joanaz de Melo, 79–130. Lisbon: Colibrí, 2020.
Melo, Cristina Joanaz de. “Menos coutadas melhores pinhais: imperio, inundações, fisiocracia, guerra e especialização das matas reais em Portugal (1777–1824).” Tiempos Modernos. Revista Electrónica de Historia Moderna 9 nº 39 (2019): 456–87.
Morán Turina, José Miguel. “Los sitios reales entre los Austrias y los Borbones”, Madrid: Revista de arte, geografía e historia 5 (2002), 201–217.
Nair, P. K. R. An Introduction to Agroforestry. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.
Pinto, António. O Pinhal do Rei – Subsídios. Alcobaça: Oficina de J. de Oliveira Junior, 1938, 2 vols.
Pinto Correia, Teresa, Nuno Ribero and Paulo Sá Sousa. “Introducing the montado, the cork and holm oak agroforestry system of Southern Portugal”, Agroforestry systems 82 (2011): 99–104.
Rackham, Oliver. Woodlands. London: Harper Collins, 2006.
Radkau, Joachim. Nature and power: A global history of the environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Real Cédula, Instrucción y Ordenanzas, que su Majestad (Dios le guarde) manda observar, para la Custodia, Administración, Conservación, y Cría de los Reales Pinares, y Matas de Robledales de Valsaín, Pirón, y Riofrío, desde quince de Octubre de mil setecientos sesenta y uno, en que se incorporaron a en la Corona. Madrid: Imprenta de Juan de San Martín, 1761.
Rey Castelao, Ofelia. Montes y política forestal en la Galicia del antiguo régimen. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1995.
Rigueiro-Rodríguez, Antonio, Jim McAdam and María Rosa Mosquera-Losada (eds.). Agroforestry in Europe. Current Status and Future Prospect. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.
Sancho Gaspar, José Luis. “El urbanismo del Real Sitio de Aranjuez”, in Riada. Estudios sobre Aranjuez (Aranjuez: Doce Calles, 1991), nº 3, pp. 9–38.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.
Silva, José Bonifacio de Andrada e Memoria sobre a necessidade de utilidades e do plantio de novos bosques em Portugal. Lisbon: Typografia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1815.
Smuts, Malcolm and George Gorse. “Introduction”, in The Politics of Space: European Courts ca. 1500–1750, edited by Marcelo Fantoni, George Gorse and Malcom Smuts (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009).
Thirgood, J. V. Man and the Mediterranean forest: A history of resource depletion. New York: Academic Press, 1981.
Tovar Martín, Virginia. “Consideraciones al valor de los ‘rústico’ en los Sitios Reales (reinado de Carlos III)”, Fragmentos 12–14 (1988), 219–231.
Trapaga-Monchet, Koldo, Álvaro Aragón-Ruano and Cristina Joanaz de Melo. “Introduction: The Game of Demiurge in the Garden of Chronos: Woods play hide-and-seek in the long rung through sustainable management”, in Roots of Sustainability in the Iberian Empires: Shipbuilding and Forestry, 14th–19th centuries, edited by Koldo Trapaga-Monchet, Álvaro Aragón-Ruano and Cristina Joanaz de Melo, 1–30. New York: Routledge, 2023, pp. 1–30.
Warde, Paul. Ecology, Economy and State Formation in Early Modern Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Warde, Paul. “The Invention of Sustainability”, Modern Intellectual History, 8/1 (2011), pp. 153–70.
Alfred T. Grove and Oliver Rackham, The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 18.
Among other publications, see Cristina Joanaz de Melo, “Menos coutadas melhores pinhais: impériodo, inundações, fisiocracia, guerra e especialização das matas reais em Portugal (1777–1824),” Tiempos Modernos: Revista electrónica de Historia Moderna,” 9, no. 39 (2019) 465–6; Cristina Joanaz de Melo, “Floresta em movimento: usar, regenerar, cuidar (séculos XIV–XIX)”, in Como Fénix Renascida – Matas, bosques e arvoredos (séculos XVI–XX). Representações, gestão, fruição, ed. Cristina Joanaz de Melo (Lisbon: Colibrí, 2020), 92–3.
Here we use the meaning given to the term by James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 9–21.
An updated state of the art is available in Koldo Trapaga-Monchet, Álvaro Aragón-Ruano and Cristina Joanaz de Melo, “Introduction: The Game of Demiurge in the Garden of Chronos: Woods play hide-and-seek in the long run through sustainable management”, in Roots of Sustainability in the Iberian Empires: Shipbuilding and Forestry, 14th–19th centuries, ed. Koldo Trapaga-Monchet, Álvaro Aragón-Ruano and Cristina Joanaz de Melo (New York: Routledge, 2023), 1–25.
Grove and Rackham, The Nature, 8–12.
John F. W. Herschel, Physical Geography (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1861), 244.
George P. Marsh, Man and Nature, or Physical Geography (London: 1864), 187–8, 279.
Marsh, Man and Nature, 187–8, 279.
This perception was also embedded by nineteenth century foresters. See, for instance, José Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, Memoria sobre a necessidade de utilidades e do plantio de novos bosques em Portugal (Lisbon: Typografia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1815), 9–11.
Oliver Rackham, Woodlands (London: Harper Collins, 2006), 134–6.
Grove and Rackham, The Nature, 14–15.
This is mentioned by Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 189–90.
Martín de los Heros de las Bárcenas, Memoria que acerca del Estado de la Real Casa y Patrimonio, y su administración en los últimos cinco meses de 1841, presenta al Excmo. Señor Tutor de S. M. D. Agustín Argüelles, el intendente general en comisión de la misma (Madrid: Aguado, Impresor de Cámara de S.M., 1842), p. 21.
Ignacio García Pereda, “Creando el boque matemático en la década de 1860. Barro Gomes en la Mata Nacional da Machada (Barreiro, Portugal): testigos cartográficos”, in Estudos da Paisagem, ed. Pedro Fidalgo (Lisbon: IHC, 2017), 223–40, esp. 226–29. For the study of the Portuguese case in-depth see, Ignacio García Pereda, Experts Florestais: Os primeiros silvicultores em Portugal (Ph.D dissertation: Universidade de Évora, 2018).
Scott, Seeing like a State, 14–20, and Paul Warde, “The Invention of Sustainability”, Modern Intellectual History, 8/1 (2011), pp. 153–70, on pp. 162–3.
António Pinto, O Pinhal do Rei – Subsídios (Alcobaça: da oficina de J. de Oliveira Júnior, 1938), vol. 2, 314–18.
Bernhard E. Fernow, History of forestry in Europe, the United States and other countries (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1911), 349–50.
Fernow, History of forestry, 352–53, 57–59.
Fernow, History of forestry, 361.
Fernow, History of forestry, 361–63.
Grove and Rackham, The Nature, 16.
J. V. Thirgood, Man and the Mediterranean forest: A history of resource depletion (New York: Academic Press, 1981).
David Attenborough, The First Eden: Mediterranean World and Man (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1987). It is worth watching the BBC four-episode series, David Attenborough, The First Eden: Mediterranean World and Man (BBC: 1987).
António Manuel Hespanha, As vésperas do Leviathan. Instituições e poder político. Portugal (séc. XVII) (Lisbon: Pedro Ferreira, 1987), 2 vols, especially vol. 1, pp. 18–25.
See the contribution of Ignacio Ezquerra Revilla in this essay.
Félix Labrador Arroyo and Magdalena Merlos Romero, “Introducción”, in Pragmatismo e ilusión: El agua y la gestión del espacio y territorio en Aranjuez y otros sitios cortesanos (siglos XVI–XIX), directed by Félix Labrador Arroyo and Magdalena Merlos Romero (Madrid: Sílex, 2023), 15–19.
See the contribution of José Eloy Hortal Muñoz in this volume.
Manuel Bastias Saavedra, “Beyond Private and Common. Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500–1800)”, in Ownership Regimes in the Iberian World (1500–1850). The Normative Role of Kinship and Communited, ed. by Manuel Bastias Saavedra (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2024), 1–35.
Bastias Saavedra, “Beyond Private”, 2–3.
See the contribution of Alfredo José Martínez González in this essay.
Rosa Congost, Tierras, leyes, Historia. Estudios sobre «la gran obra de la propiedad» (Barcelona: Crítica, 2007), 31–34.
Congost, Tierras, leyes, 219–226.
Congost, Tierras, leyes, 225–226.
Scott, Seeing like a State, 15.
Scott, Seeing like a State, 12–22.
Erich Bauer, Los montes de España en la Historia (Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones Agrarias, 1980), pp. 29–30.
See the essay of Cristina Joanaz de Melo.
This paragraph is based on Warde, “The invention”, 161–164.
Warde, “The invention”, 163.
Warde, “The invention”, 162.
Bastias Saavedra, “Beyond Private and Common”, 3–4.
Jacques Blondel, “The ‘Design’ of Mediterranean Landscapes: A Millennial Story of Humans and Ecological Systems during the Historic Period”, Human Ecology 34 (2006): 713–29. Grove and Rackham, The Nature, 190–215.
P. K. R. Nair, An Introduction to Agroforestry (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993); Antonio Rigueiro-Rodríguez, Jim McAdam and María Rosa Mosquera-Losada (eds.), Agroforestry in Europe. Current Status and Future Prospect (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).
Nair, An Introduction, 16–7.
Sonja Kay et al., “Agroforestry is paying off – Economic evaluation of ecosystem services in European landscapes with and without agroforestry systems”, Ecosystem services 36 (2019), 1–10.
Teresa Pinto-Correia, Nuno Ribeiro and Paulo Sousa, “Introducing the montado, the cork and holm oak agroforestry system of Southern Portugal”, Agroforestry systems 82 (2011), 99–101; Augusta Costa and Helena Pereira, “Montados e sobrerais: uma espécie, duas perspectivas”, in Os montados: muito para além das árvores, ed. Joaquim Silva (Lisbon: Fundação Luso-American para o Desenvolvimento, 2007), 17–35.
Jacques Blondel and James Aronson, Biology and Wildlife of the Mediterranean Region (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 199–201, 216–17.
Ofelia Rey Castelao, Montes y política forestal en la Galicia del antiguo régimen (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1995).
Álvaro Aragón-Ruano, El bosque guipuzcoano en la Edad Moderna: aprovechamiento, ordenamiento legal y conflictividad (Donostia: Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi, 2001); Álvaro Aragón-Ruano, “Los robles trasmochos guiados o ipinabarros: una apuesta sostenible de futuro para una técnica forestal olvidada”, Cuadernos de la Sociedad Española de Ciencias Forestales 30 (2009), 137–142.
The amount of literature is particularly huge, and we therefore list solely some essays that encompasses multiple case-studies: Francisco Fernández Izquierdo and Francisco Javier Moreno Díaz del Campo (coords.), Montes, pastos y caza a la vera del Guadiana en las Tablas de Daimiel: la Real Dehesa de Zacatena en la edad moderna (Granada: Comares, 2022); Félix Labrador Arroyo and Koldo Trapaga-Monchet: “Recursos hídricos y forestales en la Europa mediterránea (siglos XV–XIX)”, special issue of the journal Manuscrits. Revista d’Història Moderna 42 (2020); Cristina Joanaz de Melo (coord.), Como a Fénix Renascida. Matas, bosques e arvoredos (séculos XVI–XX): representações, gestão, fruição (Lisbon: Edições Colibri, 2020).
Bastias Saavedra, ‘Beyond private’, 1–28.
See the contribution of Francisco Fernández Izquierdo and Francisco Javier Moreno Díaz del Campo on this essay.
See the contribution of Ángel Ignacio Aguilar Cuesta, Ana Luna San Eugenio, Concepción Camarero Bullón in this essay.
Labrador Arroyo and Merlos Romero, “Introducción”, 15–23.
José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, “Los Sitios Reales como elementos clave de las monarquías europeas de la edad Moderna: una aproximación”, Studia Histórica. Historia Moderna 42/2 (2020), 200–201. José Eloy Hortal Muñoz and Merlijn Hurx (eds.): Building the Presence of the Prince: The Institutions Responsible for the Construction and Management of the Buildings of European Courts (14th–17th centuries) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2024).
Malcolm Smuts & George Gorse, “Introduction”, in Marcelo Fantoni, George Gorse & Malcom Smuts (eds.), The Politics of Space: European Courts ca. 1500–1750 (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), 16.
See for instance, Janette Dillon, The Language of Space in Court Performance, 1400–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Marcello Fantoni, Il potere dello spazio. Principe e cittá nell’Italia dei secoli XV–XVII (Rome, Bulzoni, 2002).
Fernando Checa Cremades, “Felipe II y la ordenación del territorio en torno a la corte”, Archivo Español del Arte 58 (1985), 392–398.
The multifaceted reality of the royal sites has been pointed out in several essays, such as Concepción Camarero Bullón and Félix Labrador Arroyo (dirs.), La extensión de la Corte: los Sitios Reales (Madrid: Ediciones UAM, 2017).
María del Pilar García Rodríguez and Beatriz Álvarez García, “Preservación del medio natural en los Reales Sitios del entorno de Madrid”, Investigaciones Científicas 76 (2021), 221–242.
There is a large literature on this matter, and it goes beyond the scope of this introduction.
José Miguel Morán Turina, “Los sitios reales entre los Austrias y los Borbones”, Madrid: Revista de arte, geografía e historia 5 (2002), 211–212. For the royal site of Soto de Roma see Félix Labrador Arroyo and Koldo Trapaga-Monchet, “La configuración del espacio y la explotación forestal de un enclave singular: el Real Sitio del Soto de Roma durante la dinastía Hasburgo”, Studia Histórica, Histora Moderna 39, nº 2 (2017), 293–327.
Morán Turina, “Los sitios reales”, 201.
Concepción Camarero Bullón and Laura García Juan, “Geografía histórica de los espacios reales: Alóndiga, Aceca y Barciles, despoblados del rey en la vega del Tajo”, Estudios Geográficos 284 (2018), 209–235.
Virginia Tovar Martín, “Consideraciones al valor de los ‘rústico’ en los Sitios Reales (reinado de Carlos III)”, Fragmentos 12–14 (1988), 220.
José Luis Sancho Gaspar, “El urbanismo del Real Sitio de Aranjuez”, in Riada. Estudios sobre Aranjuez (Aranjuez: Doce Calles, 1991), Nº 3, p. 14; Tovar Martín, “Consideraciones al valor”, 224–225.
Carmen García Monerris, La Corona contra la Historia. José Canga Argüelles y la reforma del Real Patrimonio valenciano (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2005), p. 59.
Archivo General de Palacio (AGP), Reinados, Carlos III, caja 24, exp. 1.
Real Cédula, Instrucción y Ordenanzas, que su Majestad (Dios le guarde) manda observar, para la Custodia, Administración, Conservación, y Cría de los Reales Pinares, y Matas de Robledales de Valsaín, Pirón, y Riofrío, desde quince de Octubre de mil setecientos sesenta y uno, en que se incorporaron a en la Corona (Madrid: Imprenta de Juan de San Martín, 1761).
Just to mention two case studies, Karl Appuhn, A forests on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: John Hopkins University, 2009); Paul Warde, Ecology, Economy and State Formation in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).