Böcker av Giacomo Bonan

The material and energy flows that characterized the metabolism of preindustrial and industrial societies were organized through complex infrastructures based on interwoven social and natural elements. Analyzing infrastructures from many methodological and thematic perspectives, the present volume adopts an extensive periodization to identify the undeniable changes caused by industrialization and the persistence of pre-existing features and dynamics. The contributions range from the late Middle Ages to the 1990s and deepen historical characteristics of urban metabolism, the study of energy systems and their transitions, and the management and control of water resources. These reveal the strategies societies and states adopted to transform and adapt their surrounding environment in a constant and challenging equilibrium of diverse interests, whose impact over time has had environmental consequences on a global scale.

The State in the Forest uses a case study of conflict over use of wood - the principal source of energy and the primary raw material at the time - to offer an environmental history of the nineteenth century `great transformation'. The focus is on Cadore, a supposedly peripheral area that was, in fact, at the core of the wood economy.