'Forced against our will to make a report' : the nature of woodland property and the problems of policing forests in eighteenth-century France

In the southwestern province of the Périgord" which in 1762 (as now) was among the most heavily timbered parts of France" it was hardly surprising that a would-be versifier from Paris should describe his noble hosts' estate near Montpon in glowing terms: on a slight, south-facing slope, and overlooking "superb" meadows leading down to the River Isle, it occupied "the loveliest position in the world [...] with woods on all sides." 1 Our delighted visitor could not be expected to know that (as now) the woodlands in this area were overwhelmingly in private hands, most of them fragmented in micro-properties that complemented the needs of small-scale agriculture. The prevailing rights of ownership and access were usually the least visible features of a wooded landscape. A trained forester might be able to tell from a glance what species of trees covered a nearby hillside, their ages, and how they were being managed.3 Perhaps she could even suggest the most likely uses for their timber. But only a long-term local inhabitant could hope to locate the boundaries of a woodland property, or identify the people legally entitled to occupy it and exploit its many resources. This article argues that the contention and conflicts over French forests that were such a prominent feature of the Revolution and its aftermath are best understood in the context of ownership and access. At the time and subsequently these woodland struggles had economic and environmental consequences that were often characterized as disastrous by regional officials and commentators on forest policy, who commonly attributed them to the breakdown of political and social authority that attended the Revolution. Historians have often amplified these themes.