The forms, functioning, and influence of common rights on society and forest management in the feudal system of Austrian Galicia, 1772–1848

Based on source materials primarily held in Lviv, Ukraine, this article examines how common rights over land and forests became established, functioned, and evolved in those Polish lands incorporated into the Austrian Habsburg monarchy at the end of the eighteenth century, and until the dissolution of the feudal economy. An afterword looks at the abolition of common rights in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It presents research on the impact of forest and pasture common rights on forest culture and management, the role of common rights in the economies of different social groups, the legal and institutional forms through which they were managed and contested, the impact of the removal of rights on peasant farms, the Austrian authorities' impact on relations between social groups, and how the actions of the central legislature affected to access to and management of resources. A brief comparison is made between the fortunes of commons under the Austrian administration and those in the Prussian and Russian parts of partitioned Poland.