This paper examines transformations in the common management of lands in a valley of the Trentino Alps during the process of Austro-Hungarian state centralization in the first half of 19th century. The main aspects of this process involved an administrative transformation that led to the abolition of all legal and institutional competences of the rural communities and their replacement with modern municipal corporations, and new forest legislation. The hypothesis proposed here is that state intervention did not cause the end of common institutions, but instead caused a general redefinition of who could use these lands and how these lands could be used. These transformations were not simple top-down impositions, but the results of conflicts and negotiations within local communities and between them and the central government.
Historians traditionally consider the Napoleonic period a key point in the process of state centralization in most of continental Europe. This is certainly true of the legislative and administrative transformations overseen by state authorities during that epoch. However, there is still much to learn about the consequences of these changes on the ground, especially in peripheral regions. In this respect, an environmental history approach can provide new perspectives on the growing presence of state authorities in the management of environmental resources and associated struggles in rural areas. In this article, I analyse the reactions of some alpine communities to state intervention in the years following the implementation of Napoleonic reforms. The lens through which these interactions are observed is that of valorisation of forest resources, which were the economic linchpin of alpine communities and, at the same time, a strategic issue for state authorities.
The two key stakeholders in the commercial exploitation of the common woodlands in the eastern Italian Alps from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century were the mountain communities, which had ownership or right of use of the woodlands, and the timber merchants, who had the capital and skills to transform those woodlands into valuable commodities. A long-term perspective on the business of cutting, transporting, and marketing timber reveals the networks, strategic relationships, and complex socioeconomic conditions that emerged from the collaboration of local populations and outside interests in the timber trade for their mutual benefit.
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