From “The Bosnian Danger” to Forest for the People: Bosnia’s Timber Frontier in the Age of Empires

Abstract This article examines the evolution of an industrialized and capital-driven timber extraction in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Habsburg governance from 1878–1914 and its social and ecological effects on the region. It emphasizes the role of both imperial policy-making and local socio-ecological factors that determined the advancement of the timber frontier in the region. The first part on early Habsburg governance illustrates how logging operations were determined by state-devised regulations of property relations and state-induced facilities that eventually resulted in industrialized extraction by means of foreign private companies. The second part on late Habsburg governance shows how forests successively acquired a political dimension. In conflicts with the local population, the Habsburg authorities prioritized social stability over the companies’ interests, whereas the Bosnian government tried to secure economic self-determination of the region by advocating for the takeover of industrial logging by domestic enterprises.