Sebastian Felten and Sebastian Leitner are giving a talk at the three-day international conference (22-24 October) "Convergences and divergences in the relationship between industries and forestry in Europe: conservation, management, uses and environmental impact (14th-19th centuries)" at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, organized by Álvaro Aragón Ruano and Koldo Trapaga Monchet.
The conference will focus on the use (including conflicts and transportation), conservation (or impact), and management of European woodlands during the period spanning the 14th to the 19th centuries. In recent years, significant progress has been made in understanding human-woodland interactions on a Europe-wide scale. However, there is a need for a comprehensive contribution that explores the convergences and divergences of these interactions across Europe through a multidisciplinary lens. The conference aims to bring together specialists from diverse fields to examine these topics from various perspectives, encompassing different chronological and spatial scales. This event promises to foster meaningful dialogue and advance our collective understanding of the historical dynamics of European woodlands.
Was Mining Once Sustainable? Resource Management as a Case for Applied History
In the context of the current climate crisis, discussions about the sustainable use of resources are omnipresent but contradictory, so that the search for solutions often ends in political stalemates. Medieval historian Annette Kehnel sees the reason for this in the fact that the narratives are deadlocked and suggests looking to the past for inspiration for new political narratives in the sense of applied historical science. Mining history is only of limited use as a source of inspiration, as it was considered exploitative, polluting, and destructive of woodlands already in the 16th century. Accordingly, Kehnel does not give it much space. Mining in early modern Europe was indeed very ambivalent. On the one hand, with shift work, joint-stock capital and new blasting technology, it is considered a laboratory for industrialised modernity; on the other hand, it remained embedded in agrarian societies and their norms and practices. On the one hand, the actors involved pursued profit-oriented rationalisation, while on the other they were guided by magical-religious ideas and the common good. It is precisely because of this ambivalence, we argue, that the study of early modern mining can lead to new political narratives. This paper analyses both concepts of ‘mining sustainability’ circulating in Central Europe, and concrete practices of resource management in the Ore Mountains and Lower Hungary (today: Central Slovakia).To this end, we analyse sources from the context of mining administrations in the Electorate of Saxony and the Habsburg lands. We conclude by asking what an applied history of early modern resource management could look like.
Here is the full program of the conference:
October 22nd 2025
Conference inauguration, 10:00-10:30 hours
Key-note speaker, 10:30-11:15 hours
- Péter Szabó (Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Science): The management, uses and conservation of European woodlands in the 14th to 19th centuries
Coffee-break, 11:15-11:45 hours
11:45-13:00 hours, Session 1
- András Vadas (Eötvös Loránd University): Political Changes and Forest Management in Sixteenth-Century Hungary
- Koldo Trapaga Monchet (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos): Forestry policies, strategic industries and environmental impact: case-studies of sugar in Madeira and shipbuilding in Lisbon (15th-17th centuries)
13:00-14:00 hours, discussion
14:00-16:00, lunch break
16:00-17:45, Session 2
- Keith Pluymers (Illinois State University): “Memory, Chronology, and Causation in the Deforestation of Ireland”
- Abigail Dowling (Mercer University): “Pour le Were”: Conservative Natural Resource Practice during and after the Franco-Flemish Conflict in Artois, 1302-1305
- Sebastian Poublanc (Universitè de Toulouse II): Social configurations and their impact on forest management in the South of France during the modern era
17:45-18:30, Discussion
October 23rd 2025
10:00-11:15, Session 3
- Katia Occhi (FBK- Instituto Storico Germanico Italico): The forest from ecosystem to capital: conflicts over natural resources on the borders of the German Habsburg Empire (15th and 16th centuries).
- Giacomo Bonan & Claudio Lorenzini (Università degli studi di Torino): Continuity and Change in Woodland Management during the Industrial Transition: A Case Study from the Northeastern Italian Alps
11:15-11:45, Coffee-break
11:45-13:30, Session 4
- Nigel Nayling (Swansea University): Scientific Approaches to Dendroprovenance and Identification of Forest Management - Challenges and Opportunities?
- Aoife Daly (International Dendrochronology Research Laboratory): Timber resource exploitation for shipbuilding – shortage, surplus and regionality
- Rafal Reichert (University of Warsaw): Locating Timber Cutting and Storage Sites in 18th-Century Pomerania: Historical Data Analysis and GIS-Based Mapping
13:30-14:30 hours, Discussion
14:30-16:30 hours, Lunch break
16:30-17:40, Session 5:
- Sebastian Felten & Sebastian Leitner (University of Vienna): Was Mining Once Sustainable? Resource Management as a Case of Applied History
- José Antonio Bettencourt (CHAM-Universidade Nova de Lisboa): Abandoned on the beach, reused and recycled in the port: timber, ships and ship finds in Lisbon waterfront (16th-19th centuries)
17:40-18:30 hours, Discussion
October 24th 2025
10:00-11:45 hours, Session 6
- John Wing (The City University of New York): Political Forestry and Spanish Naval Resurgence in the Early Eighteenth Century: Juan Valdés y Castro’s Forest Inspections in Context
- Álvaro Aragón Ruano (Euskal Herriko Unibersitatea-Universidad del País Vasco): Ironworks’ and shipbuilding’s impact on forestry pattern changes in the Basque Country (14th-17th centuries)
- Ana Rita Trindade (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas): Domestic timber and imports in the Maritime Department of Cádiz (1717-1759): alternative or complementary resources for the Spanish Navy?
11:45-12:45 hours, Discussion and conference closing.
12:45-14:30 hours, lunch
Find more information about the conference [here].
