Trees, Woods and Forests: A Social and Cultural History

by Charles Watkins

Overview

Forests—and the trees within them—have always been a central resource for the development of technology, culture, and the expansion of humans as a species. Examining and challenging our historical and modern attitudes toward wooded environments, this engaging book explores how our understanding of forests has transformed in recent years and how it fits in our continuing anxiety about our impact on the natural world.
            Drawing on the most recent work of historians, ecologist geographers, botanists, and forestry professionals, Charles Watkins reveals how established ideas about trees—such as the spread of continuous dense forests across the whole of Europe after the Ice Age—have been questioned and even overturned by archaeological and historical research. He shows how concern over woodland loss in Europe is not well founded—especially while tropical forests elsewhere continue to be cleared—and he unpicks the variety of values and meanings different societies have ascribed to the arboreal. Altogether, he provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary overview of humankind’s interaction with this abused but valuable resource.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780233734
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	02/15/2015
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Charles Watkins is professor of rural geography at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is coauthor of Uvedale Price 1747-1829: Decoding the Picturesque and The British Arboretum: Science, Trees and Culture in the Nineteenth Century.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Ancient Practices
2. Forests and Spectacle
3. Tree Movements
4. Tree Aesthetics
5. Pollards
6. Sherwood Forest
7. Estate Forestry
8. Scientific Forestry
9. Recreation and Conservation
10. Ligurian Semi-natural Woodland
Afterword
 
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

Charcoal, warships, fruit, houses, shade and sheer beauty—the manifold uses of trees have bound them inextricably to human culture. Geographer Watkins’s interdisciplinary exploration of that long, convoluted relationship is a fact-packed dazzler. With Watkins we walk a Neolithic 'road' of ash planks, delight in Pliny’s description of German forests as ‘untouched by the ages and coeval with the world,’ celebrate the rise of scientific forestry and ponder the diseases and creeping urbanization now threatening the future of these stupendous organisms. Sumptuously illustrated.”

Nature

Watkins constantly sets imaginative or lyrical appreciation against a stricter focus on forest and woodland management, and on human intervention in the landscape over the centuries. . . . Always brisk and informative, Watkins draws on a variety of disciplines. . . . The ‘history of trees’ is constantly being rewritten,’ Watkins concludes—and his book is a welcome, lively and intriguing addition to this continuing line.

Times Literary Supplement

Rural geographer Watkins’s history of the interactions between humans and trees is both sprawling and highly detailed. . . . Weaves together evidence from the sciences (archaeology, genetics, ecology), the humanities (history, poetry, prose, painting), and the social sciences (politics, policy, economics) to document the ever-changing perception that Western culture has had of trees and forests.

Choice