SUPERVISOR: Martin SCHMID

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Katharina LINNE

This thesis examines the transformation of forest governance in the Habsburg Monarchy during the long nineteenth century, focusing on the Alpine Crownlands of Cisleithania between 1766 and 1914. Building on scholarship that identifies this period as a fundamental shift from locally embedded forest governance towards expanded state control (Hölzl 2010; Hölzl 2010b; Lucic 2022), the study analyses how cultural programmes regulating forest use were formulated, contested, and institutionalised amid the convergence of industrial demand, state-building ambitions, and new scientific rationales. It argues that the industrialisation of forests was not an inevitable economic process but a deliberate political-economic project enacted through legal codification and institutional development.

Through an analysis of key legislative debates surrounding the Imperial Forest Act of 1852, the agrarian congress of 1849, and the forestry congress of 1876, the thesis traces how a rationalised paradigm of forestry, prioritising timber yield and fiscal income, gained authority and was embedded in law and practice. Methodologically, it combines environmental history (McNeill 2000, 2003) with historical discourse analysis (Landwehr 2008) and qualitative content analysis to examine the interaction of political, scientific, and legal knowledge in shaping forest governance. In doing so, it challenges notions of a coherent Habsburg legal state, instead revealing a fragmented yet persistent process of socio-ecological standardisation that reshaped forest governance, centre–periphery relations, and human–forest relationships within the monarchy, contributing to the forest transition observed in parts of the Habsburg lands during the nineteenth century (Gingrich et al. 2022).

The thesis is guided by two central research questions: 

  • How did the agendas of policymakers, large forest owners, and scientific experts evolve and interact throughout the long nineteenth century, and to what extent can processes of rationalisation and other dimensions of industrialisation be observed during this period? 

  • In what manner did forestry legislation shape the industrialisation of forests, and to what extent were these debates articulated within specialist publications during the late nineteenth century?