“A destruction that preserves”: Maritime warfare, empirical forestry and sustainability in Portugal (13th–17th centuries)

Abstract

This chapter attempts to shed light on the forestry policies established by the Portuguese Crown for creating and preserving forest cover from the late 13th to the 17th century. Whereas the creation and evolution of the first royal forests were related to ensuring hunting grounds for the Crown, by around the beginning of the 16th century, shipbuilding had replaced hunting as the focus of forestry policies. These forestry policies devised and implemented by the Portuguese Crown sought both to conserve existing woodlands and to conduct new plantings for the future. By combining unknown and published historical sources with an extensive bibliography, this chapter argues that the military and trade demands of the Portuguese Empire triggered an empirical sustainable forestry, which permitted the conservation of woodlands that still exist to this day.