04127nam 2200601 450 991046070830332120200520144314.01-4426-5655-71-4426-3324-710.3138/9781442656550(CKB)3710000000433130(EBL)3432061(OCoLC)929153684(MiAaPQ)EBC4669536(DE-B1597)465711(OCoLC)944178731(DE-B1597)9781442656550(Au-PeEL)EBL4669536(CaPaEBR)ebr11256068(OCoLC)958514165(EXLCZ)99371000000043313020160920h19561956 uy 0engur|n|---|||||rdacontentrdamediardacarrierForests and French sea power, 1660-1789 /Paul Walden Bamford[Toronto, Ontario] :University of Toronto Press,1956.©19561 online resource (253 p.)HeritageDescription based upon print version of record.0-8020-7033-7 1-4426-5162-8 Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- I. Dynastic Policy and French Maritime Power -- II. Masts, Ship Timber, and French Forest Law -- III. Timber Cuts and Contracts -- IV. Transport of Naval Timber and Masts -- V. Forest Depletion -- VI. Domestic Timber Shortage and the Navy -- VII. The Quest for Domestic and Colonial Masts and Spars -- VIII. The Northern Market in Naval Stores -- IX. Merchant Shipping and the Timber Problem -- X. Black Sea and North American Markets after 1776 -- XI. Conclusions -- Sources -- Index By choosing to concentrate upon discovering what forest resources were available to the French navy during the ancien régime and what use it was able to make of them, Mr. Bamford has not only provided the first monograph on that subject in the English language, but has gone far toward explaining why France was the loser in the long duel with England for the control of commerce and the extension of empire. Two years of research in the Archives Nationales and in the Archives de la Marine in Paris, Toulon, and Rochefort enabled him to draw on contemporary sources of information of which little, if any, use has been made before, and a further year of research in the libraries of New York City, particularly in the rich Proudfit Naval Collection, also yielded new material. It is Mr. Bamford's achievement to have handled this vast store of primary sources with such skill and judgement that the reader, by turning over letters from disgruntled forest proprietors, reports from harassed maîtres on the trickery and recalcitrance of the peasants, instructions from the top echelon of the navy to inspectors in the forests, and a variety bills, receipts, and memoranda, is given at first hand an appreciation of the difficulties faced by the navy in trying to obtain timber and masts of the choice quality required for building ships-of-the-line. The navy had to compete with the merchant marine and with industrial and private users of fuel for supplies that were continually being depleted by mismanagement and by the conversion of forests to arable land. Measures, superficially admirable, for conserving the forests are found on closer examination to be at once over-precise and not properly enforced. Transport, even in a country so abundantly supplied with navigable rivers as France, was expensive and difficult.TimberForests and forestryFranceFranceHistory, NavalElectronic books.Timber.Forests and forestry359.8320944Bamford Paul W(Paul Walden),1921-248005MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910460708303321Forests and French sea power, 1660-17892224217UNINA