In February 2024 the designated body of the geological sciences rejected the proposition that humans have entered the Anthropocene epoch. Historians are yet to tell history as the interaction with materials and living beings. The history of forestry is a particularly promising subject to study. Environmental concerns and the large-scale commodification of forests, often with state participation, have been walking hand-in-hand since at least the mid-eighteenth century. Moreover, the history of the development of forestry’s standardised methodology is a global history. This book describes the efforts and experiences of trained foresters driven by competing priorities, as well as their impact on the society, landscape and politics of Hungary between about 1860 and 1975.

Róbert Balogh is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Ostrava. His work concerns historical dimensions of the ongoing climatic and ecological crises, including the impact of professional forest management practices, energy production, food shortage and dairy production. Thinking within the Anthropocene, Balogh studies these issues in the Middle Danube Valley and colonial South Asia.

Chapter 1 Introducing the Changes
Chapter 2 A History of Value: Forests and Timber as Commodities
Chapter 3 Foresters Building Nation. Nationalism in Hungarian Forestry, 1862-1913
Chapter 4 The Advance of the State in the Forest in and out of War, 1914–1944
Chapter 5 Forestry Programmes as Nodes of Stalinism: Global Interconnections and Local Influences, 1945–1956
Chapter 6 Human Lives and Tree Species in Experiments: the case of István Bánó’s work with pine species
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index