The Horka litter raking incident: On foresters and peasants in nineteenth-century Moravia

0573975 - BÚ 2024 RIV GB eng J - Journal Article
Szabó, Péter
The Horka litter raking incident: On foresters and peasants in nineteenth-century Moravia.
Environment and History. Roč. 29, č. 3 (2023), s. 323-343. ISSN 0967-3407. E-ISSN 1752-7023
R&D Projects: GA TA ČR(CZ) TO01000132
Institutional support: RVO:67985939
Keywords : traditional forest management * forest conflickt * leaf litter raking
OECD category: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Impact factor: 1.1, year: 2022
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://doi.org/10.3197/096734021X16245313029958

Litter raking was a traditional forest use representing an interface between forestry and agriculture. In forest history, it has usually been presented as the harmful removal by peasants of biomass, which was gradually eliminated by foresters, leading to better forest preservation. Based on the example of an exceptionally well-documented case of illegal litter raking in Moravia in 1845, in this paper I argue that juxtaposing foresters and peasants in connection with litter raking masks a much more complicated reality. Neither foresters nor peasants can be interpreted as homogeneous groups because there were significant differences in the opinions and agendas of various representatives within these groups. In addition, opinions were not static on either side but could change in a discursive pattern. In a wider context, the environmental historical analysis of the Horka litter raking incident facilitates the understanding of larger societal processes that influenced past woodland management in Central Europe, and therefore current ecosystems too.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0351264