Sixteenth-century shipbuilding largely stripped the Mediterranean of its oak forests.

Evidence

By the end of the sixteenth century, the Mediterranean, with the exception of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia), had been largely divested of its oak supplies. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 328

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off ch17-18’s claim that mercantile capitalism, not population, drove forest decline after 1500 — here demonstrated concretely in the Mediterranean naval industry.