Die Alpen – Modernisierung und Ressourcen / Le Alpi – modernizzazione e risorse

Abstract

The Alps – Modernization and Resources

The modernization of the Alps that began in the last part of the nineteenth century unfolded as a process of transformation that was very much ambivalent in character. Infrastructural development not only connected resources and centres of production in the Alps to extensive trade networks and markets for raw materials and other valued commodities, but also robbed many people of their means of subsistence and suppressed existing ways and methods of production. This journal issue investigates how the modernization process in the Alps was bound up with the expansion and reorientation of infrastructures, which allowed the discovery of new natural resources and their extraction, export and capitalization within the wider economy. 

All five articles deal with the modern history of resources and their usage, with the case studies coming from regions in four different countries in the Alps. They each concentrate on one kind of resource, whether the mining of minerals for profit or, alternatively, the protection and maintenance of natural resources such as forests and rivers during a period when these regions became part of the new industrial age. Hence, the comparative history of the Alps is enriched through five regional case studies that lay bare the ambivalence of development and modernization: financial profit and improved infrastructure were always accompanied by cultural and ecological losses, and - for certain groups – social and economic failure.

English abstracts - issue GRSR 2/2024 (pdf)