Beginning in the Middle Ages, the Republic of Venice played an increasingly important commercial role in the Mediterranean, rapidly becoming one of the richest states in Europe. By the early modern period it was also one of the largest cities in Europe, with a population often approaching 150,000 people (Appuhn, 866). Keenly aware of their debts to the sea and to seafaring, the Venetian government began to worry over their supply of timber and pitch, the primary components of shipbuilding.
The House of Construction
The first step the government took to ensure the health of their shipping was in the twelfth century, when the doge of Venice consolidated all of the city’s many private, independent shipyards into one, massive state-run enterprise. The Venetians called this state-run ship factory the "Arsenal," a word taken from Arabic, meaning "House of Construction." (Perlin, 146) Its purpose was to make shipbuilding faster, cheaper, and more efficient, and it worked. Venice continued to grow rich and powerful, and soon became the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean.
Yet, the crises was not over: it was merely put off.
Legislating for the Forests
Increasing pressures on Venetian timber supplies in the fourteenth century saw legislation by the government aimed at guaranteeing their access to oak and beech wood, and at conserving the wood they already had at their disposal. Karl Appuhn writes that "in 1350, the Great Council passed a law regulating the sale of oak, giving the Arsenal the right of first refusal on all oak brought to market in Venice." (Appuhn, 867) He then further notes that "[the] Council also enacted a series of measures meant to discourage the frivolous consumption of naval stores; for example, a 1372 law fined returning galley captains for every broken or damaged oar." (Appuhn, 867)
While Appuhn argues that these early conservation measures were ineffective, he nevertheless recognizes the ideological and political importance of their being enacted at all. It was also in this century that the Republic expanded inland, winning the expansive forest of Montello and the area surrounding it from the March of Treviso. (Perlin, 151) However, here they enacted no further major legislation, preferring to let the locals in their newly claimed territories continue practicing their habitual customs without much Venetian interference.
The next major push in Venetian forest policy came after Venice’s humiliating naval defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1470, at the battle of Euboea. The Turkish victory inspired the Ottomans to be more aggressive in the Mediterranean, with their ultimate goal being the complete commercial and military domination of the sea. One high-ranking Turkish minister went so far as to gloat to the Venetian ambassador in Istanbul: "Tell the Venetian Lords that they are through with wedding the sea." (Perlin, 150)
Reacting To Defeat, Rebuilding The Navy
The Venetians reacted to their defeat at Euboea by immediately appraising their current forest holdings, and particularly the forest of Montello in the Treviso area, along the southeastern section of the Alps. They realized that they would need a bigger and better fleet to combat the Turkish threat, but they were horrified to discover that much of their valuable timber had been cut down and wasted for use as "barrel staves and charcoal." (Perlin, 150) Landowners who set fires to clear land for pastures or planting had destroyed an even greater number of trees than the merchants and craftsmen who chopped down individual plants for their trades, however, because "forested land brought them a mere half ducat per field whereas each field made into pasture was worth twenty-five or more ducats." (Perlin, 150)
Realizing that they would need to put a stop to this squandering of their forestlands, the Venetians declared in 1471 that "all cutting of wood or ordering the cutting of wood of any sort in the forest of Montello for any other reason than for use of the Arsenal" was to be forbidden. (Perlin, 150) In 1476, six more laws were passed governing the use of community forests across the rest of Venice’s territory, aimed at slowing the rate of deforestation that occurred outside of Montello. (Appuhn, 872)
When the populace reacted against these policies, ignoring the laws, Venetian officials responded by stepping up enforcement and making the punishments for disobedience harsher. Where previous penalties had included a twenty-lira fine and, or, two months in jail, lawbreakers now could look forward to being "whipped, imprisoned, sent into exile, and even quartered and decapitated." (Perlin, 152) And soon an armed warden and two deputies policed the forest of Montello, protecting it and apprehending wrongdoers. For a while, this strategy seemed to be working, and Venice recovered strength through the sixteenth century.
The Decline of Venetian Forests Becomes the Decline of Venetian Power
By the seventeenth century, a hundred years of imperfect and uneven protection and enforcement had left most of Venice's forests cleared of their trees. "In 1588 in the territory under the jurisdiction of Padua," writes Karl Appuhn, "there were six privately owned stands containing oak trees suitable for Arsenal use. In 1586 there were 350 such stands in the neighboring jurisdiction of Treviso [where the carefully protected forest of Montello stood]. A century of selective enforcement had succeeded in preserving oak around Treviso, while in the area around Padua oak had been all but eradicated." (Appuhn, 875)
The forest of Montello thus became the exception, rather than the rule, and the price of Venetian timber became exorbitant. In 1594, one Venetian document attested that it was wiser for ship owners "to have a vessel built abroad than in Venice," because of the price and the "long delays of those in Venice due to problems in procuring sufficient timber." (Perlin, 160) By 1606, "over half of all the ships in the Venetian merchant fleet had been built outside of the Republic," and "[ninety] years later almost 80 percent of the commercial vessels flying the flag of Venice had been built abroad." (Perlin, 160)
With its fleet dwindling and its maritime ventures more costly than ever before, Venice entered a period of decline. It could not participate in the Atlantic trade of the seventeenth century, as the north European empires did, and, indeed, it even lost its hegemony in the Mediterranean (as well as many of its territorial claims), as rivals began to outgrow it. With less forest coverage, the native soil lost much of its nutrients, and annual crops were less fruitful. Soil erosion also flooded the port of Venice with mud and debris that hampered its usefulness, and the rivers flooded more regularly with runoff from the now-barren hillsides. Unable to provide timber for itself through imperial holdings in the form of colonies abroad, and having exhausted its own forest reserves, Venice thus slipped from its former position of prominence.
Sources
Appuhn, Karl. "Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in Renaissance Venice." The Journal of Modern History: 72, 4, (Dec., 2000), 861-889.
Perlin, John. A Forest Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989.
Robert Marcell - Robert Marcell received a B.A. in History in 2007 and an M.A. in the Social Sciences in 2008.
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