Prologue: Common land and forest resources: From the ancient régime to the new order

Giacomo Bonan (b. Feltre, 1987) is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bologna and research fellow at the Laboratory of the History of the Alps at the University of Italian Switzerland. He has studied and worked in Bologna, Stockholm and Venice. His research interests include the relations between property regimes and systems of natural resources management; forest history; water history; and rural social conflicts associated with modernisation. He is now working on a project about the transformation of an Italian river during the industrial transition.