Invisible Mountains? The Eastern and Southern Carpathians and their Environmental History (Fourteenth–Seventeenth Centuries)

Abstract

The environmental history of the pre-modern Eastern and Southern Carpathians is largely understudied, primarily due to the scarcity of sources. Also, since these mountains divided Moldavia and Wallachia from Transylvania, historians have regarded them as a political frontier. This article shows the possibilities of studying the Carpathians’ past environment while demonstrating short and long-term anthropogenic changes from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It also offers a detailed overview of the extant sources that complement and confirm the results from palaeobotanical and dendrochronological studies. The Ottoman fiscal and commercial pressure on Moldavia and Wallachia as well as the emergence of Transylvania as an independent principality in the sixteenth century increased demand for grassland, fuelwood and timber, affecting the environment in the long run. The article shows that the Southern and Eastern Carpathians were well-integrated into the regional and superregional economy and the importance of their resources was not marginal.