1 Cities Hiding the Forests: Wood Supply, Hinterlands and Urban Agency in the Southern Low Countries thirteen-eighteenth centuries Paulo Charruadas and Chloé Deligne State of the Art: Dominant Narratives and Reflexive Framework The Middle Ages as well as the Early Modern period were by and large ‘civilizations of wood’. Wood was the primary source of energy, only partially rivalled by peat and coal where these raw materials were locally available and exploited. As such wood served all kinds of purposes, in the domestic sphere (heating, cooking) as well as in industry (bakery, brewery, metal industry, salt production, etcetera). It played a key role in the manufacturing of many tools and devices, it was used in the transport sector (carts, ships), for making beverage and food containers (barrels, casks), in agriculture (plows, fences) and in many craft industries. Finally – even if secondary in quantitative terms – it was one of the main materials used for building. Against this background, the importance of wood for the process of urbanisation is glaringly obvious (Schubert, 1989; Knoll, 2006, pp.80-81; Haneca et al., 2009). However, little attention has been paid to the environmental dynamics between cities and their wood resources in the literature dedicated to urban history and the urbanisation of Europe, or of some regions within Europe (AGN, 1980; Verhulst, 1999; Pinol et al., 2003; Clark, 2009). Conversely, environmental history of woodlands has paid little attention to the process of urbanisation (Delort and Walter, 2001; Rackham, 2001; Aberth, 2012). Until quite recently, it was hard to find any studies bridging both themes, especially for ‘early’ periods like the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. With regards to wood supply and woodland management, historiography has been limited to general considerations, assuming that the general population growth and the concurrent growing urbanisation of the Middle Ages led to an overall deterioration of woodlands and, more generally, to extensive deforestation, at least in Western Europe (Braudel, 1979, pp.408- 16; Roche, 1991; Williams, 2003). The emphasis has long been on the dieback of the woodlands, but with little regard for forest management, for technical knowledge, or for the evolution of forest ecosystems.