Boletín de la AsociaciónForest de harvesting Geógrafos in the Españoles mountains N.º of the 62 Corredor- 2013, págs.and Montnegre 477-482 mid-nineteenth century I.S.S.N.: 0212-9426 FOREST HARVESTING IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE CORREDOR AND MONTNEGRE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY Luis Urteaga Francesc Nadal Departament de Geografia Humana. Universitat de Barcelona
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[email protected] I. INTRODUCTION The forests of the Corredor and Montnegre massifs, intensely exploited since the Middle Ages, were subjected to severe pressure in the eighteen hundreds. Among the causes for this intensification in the exploitation of forest resources were the increasing demand for timber for ship building, fuel consumption in glass kilns and other industrial activities, and the extension of the railway network in the north of the Maresme county, which revaluated forest resources in the zone by facilitating their extraction. Recent studies have identified the profound transformations in the landscape occurring in the Montnegre-Corredor zone in the 19th century. However, a large part of academic effort has been centred on long-term landscape evolution, relegating to a secondary plane the characterisation of the exploitations themselves and the specification of their economic importance. Our work places the emphasis on forest use, precisely in a crucial period for forest development: the middle years of the eighteen hundreds. The main sources for this work are the territorial tax statistics (amillaramientos) corresponding to 1852 and 1862, as well as the fiscal documentation connected with them: assessment cards, claim forms for damages due to the exceeding of quotas, and investigation files. II.