Ekonomska- i Ekohistorija 145 ARTAN R. HOXHA - EXPLOITING AND CONSERVING EXPLOITING AND CONSERVING: FORESTS, NATION, AND STRATEGIES OF DEVELOPMENT IN 20TH CENTURY ALBANIA1 ISKORIŠTAVANJE I OČUVANJE: ŠUME, NACIJA I STRATEGIJE RAZVOJA U ALBANIJI U 20. STOLJEĆU Artan R. HOXHA Received / Primljeno: 12. 10. 2018. University of Pittsburgh Accepted / Prihvaćeno: 17. 12. 2018. 3702 Posvar Hall Original scientific paper / Izvorni znanstveni rad History Department UDK / UDC: 630*6(496.5)“20” Pittsburgh, PA 15260 630*9(496.5)“20” USA
[email protected] Summary Since the 19th-century, forests have been considered both a source for the economic development and a patrimony to be defended. This dualism between the economic gains and ecological imperatives have remained largely unbridged. The Albanian experience is not an exception to this trajectory. Although the different political and intellectual elites have considered forests a national patrimony, they have failed to defend and expand the forest-cover which have been shrinking. The territory of today’s Albania, due to its geographical position, climatic influences, and topography has a very rich flora, including forests. Like everywhere else, human activity has historically played a critical role in the condition and distribution of forest cover in Albania. Until the establishment of the Albanian national state, both the rural population and the elite exploited the forests without paying attention to their regeneration. The Ottoman Empire started to implement policies for the central management of the forests, but in the Albanian provinces, their effects were limited. The Ottoman bureaucracy did not stop the rural communities and landlords to log the forests for fuel, export their timber, burn them for opening new pastures or rooting out the bandits hiding in them.