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Paper short abstract:

Since the 19th century, the volume of international timber trade has grown enormously. While its impact on the condition of tropical forests has been widely discussed, this is less the case for the forests of Central Europe. To fill this gap, an empirical study of Polish forests is proposed.

Paper long abstract:

The responsibility of international trade in the process of environmental degradation has been the subject of much debate in environmental history. Proponents of the unequal ecological exchange approach, inspired by world system theory, have stressed the importance of trade flows in the environmental degradation of peripheral areas whose resources are put at the service of more powerful centres. Others stress the difficulty of highlighting the role of exports as a real environmental burden. However, empirical studies on this issue are largely lacking, especially for the period before the mid-twentieth century. To fill this gap, the paper focuses on the case of timber in the Polish lands, which have been an important international supplier of timber and forest products since at least the sixteenth century. The quality of the statistical material available from the mid-nineteenth century onwards makes it possible to analyse the effects of international trade in a truly documented way. By distinguishing different regions of analysis (Poland was divided between several empires at the time), the presentation systematically compares the available figures on timber exports to Germany (the region's most important customer) with those on natural forest growth and standing volume, which are more difficult to reconstruct. A discussion of the figures allows for a more nuanced approach to the reality of the depletion caused by German commercial penetration of Polish soil, and thus to go beyond a superficial analysis of the actors' discourses and to see what material reality they were based on.