Exporting Environmental Burdens into the Central-European Periphery: Christmas Tree Trade and Unequal Ecological Exchange Between Germany and Habsburg Galicia around 1900

Although Germany is one of the largest timber importers in the world, scholars have paid little attention to the German role in the history of globalized timber markets. Focusing on one commodity in particular, the Christmas tree, the article intends to shed new light on the German exploitation of Central European forests within the theoretical framework of the unequal ecological exchange. It shows how foreign trade with Habsburg Galicia was used by Germany in order to get rid of the socio-environmental burdens of tree extraction. During the 1900's, Galicia provided each year at least several tens of thousand, maybe a few hundred thousand Chrismas trees for the German market. Increasing forest degradation and the socio-political struggle over the issue of timber exports in Galicia shows that the environmental and social costs of this trade were much higher than the fi nancial benefi ts. Unlike other countries in Nothern and Eastern Europe, Galicia did not succeed in regulating its timber exports because of political divisions and economic weakness. Ultimately, Christmas tree export from Galicia to Germany confi rms the peripheral status of this territory within the world-system and provides an historical example of the resource consumption/environmental degradation paradox.