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GREEN HISTORY? 75
half of the 19" century were often pastures or orchards in the second half of the
18" century. The settlement-limits provided in mediaeval diplomas shows a similar
situation in the Ärpädian Age as well (Szakäcs 2012). In the proximity of settlements,
woodless periods alternated with reforestations, which eradicated many of the signs
of earlier land use by settlements (K. Németh—Maté 2020). On the other hand,
ethnobotanical and forest historical investigations have identified several forest types
created by forest management in Hungary, which means that the word forest has
several connotations (Szabé 2023; 2005; Varga et al. 2017; Molnar—Erdélyi—Hart¬
degen-Birö-Pänya-Vadäsz 2022). The significance of forests — wooded gardens
and groves — formed by conscious human activity has been increasingly stressed by
researchers of other continents, too (e.g., Sri Lanka, Central America, the Amazon
basin). The interaction between forests and human communities is a global story.
It is worth selecting from it a turning point related to the global history of ideas.
A re-reading of the emancipation of the serfs has an important role for Hungarian
environmental history in the modern age. The early- and mid-19" century liberal
interpretation of the term emancipation and the intention behind it were the
liberation of society from the bonds of serfdom, which entailed that millions would
acquire private property and with it citizenship. It was included among the 12
demands of the nation, as proclaimed on 15 March 1848. However, liberation
from bondage — attempted under the revolutionary and constitutional conditions
of 1848 and eventually slowly unfolding during the centralized relations of the
1850s — did not solely mean the right to freedom. Agrarian historical investigations
in the 1960s already established that the liberation of the serfs also transformed
the peasantry’s traditional way of life. The subdivision of land formerly used in
common by the serfs and their landlord also entailed the abolition of the system
of collectively used pasture and forests. This, along with arbitrary rules about land
that serfs rented, meant that many serf families living in the village but having
little to no land according to the socage ordinances of the second half of the 18"
century were squeezed out of land use. On the other hand, the arable areas created
by clearing the forests became the objects of decades of disputes. Likewise hotly
disputed was the location of pastures to be allocated (Orosz 1998; Vérés 1976).
Thus, the emancipation of the serfs is to be examined as an event in environmental
history as well.
Memory, narrative and the historian as expert
We have now arrived at the other potentiality of historical knowledge: through
historical analyses, we may point out the one-sidedness of its use in memory
politics. Actually, historians often act as memory experts, specialists who know
whether the episodes narrated and used as knowledge or as a basic platform which
favored certain political interpretations indeed happened. Of what does this expert
activity consist? On the one hand, historians must be aware that actors in the past
also tried to design interpretive frames comprehensible in their age and conducive
to their goals. Historical facts always go together with representation, and the
analysis must interpret their interaction (Szécsi 2020: 92). Moreover, contemporary
political actors also have a vested interest in picking certain modes of past narratives
and keeping silent about others. They create their own representative frameworks