Abstract
[...]state forestry emerged very late in liberal northwestern Europe: in 1899 in the Netherlands and 1919 in Britain. [...]nature made it easy for the British and the Dutch to satisfy their needs through market forces, but made state intervention important in the German lands. The juxtaposition of these cases from across northern Europe allows for fruitful comparisons and reflection on the evolution of states and their forests in the modern period. Because the essays sometimes take significantly different approaches to their topics, it would have been useful if the authors had collaborated more closely, but the editors' concluding essay does a a good job of drawing the articles together.