Martin Bemmann
Martin Bemmann
Lecturer - Department of History, University of Freiburg
The Times, They’re A-Changin'... Industrialization, Globalization, and Forestry in Central Europe around 1900
September 18, 2025 - 12:00 PM
Between 1850 and 1914, Europe witnessed a massive expansion in industrial and agricultural production and related economic, social, political, and environmental change. In addition, historians characterize this period as the era of a first globalization that saw an upsurge in international exchanges of people, ideas and goods. This talk concentrates on the consequences these developments had for the utilization and the management of forests, especially in the heartland of classical forestry, Central Europe. Bemmann argues that the emergence of a continental economic space of wood in Europe in the second half of the 19th century stabilized forest management in Central Europe that aimed for stable wood supplies to industrializing economies. At the same time, though, it also led to significant shifts in the understanding of the underlying concepts of sustainable forestry.
Speaker Biography
Martin Bemmann – Lecturer (Privatdozent), Department of History, University of Freiburg (Germany)
Martin Bemmann is interested in European history of the 19th and 20th centuries in global contexts, as well as in economic and environmental history from a global perspective. Besides the history of wood-based businesses in Europe, he is currently investigating the international research collaboration of the East-European Socialist countries in the 1970s and 1980s. Recent publications include a monograph on the emergence and development of international economic statistics (Weltwirtschaftsstatistik: Internationale Wirtschaftsstatistik und die Geschichte der Globalisierung, 1850–1950, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023), two edited Special Issues that explore the history of the International Statistical Institute (European Review of History 30/1, 2023) and the relevance of wood-based businesses for the economic development of industrializing Europe (Economic History Yearbook 65/2, 2024), as well as an essay on National Socialist origins of forest-based development schemes of the FAO (Journal of Contemporary History 58/3, 2023, 424–48).
Recommended Reading
Lotz, C. (2016). Opening Up Untouched Woodlands: Forestry Experts Reflecting on and Driving the Timber Frontier in Northern Europe, 1880–1914. In G. M. Winder & A. Dix (Eds.), Trading Environments: Frontiers, Commercial Knowledge, and Environmental Transformation, 1750–1990 (pp. 69–82). Routledge.