War, Power and the Economy: Mercantilism and State Formation in 18th-Century Europe

ISBN-13: 9780367872458 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 284 str.

A. Gonzalez Enciso

Opis

This book contains a comparative history of Great Britain, France and Spain, the three rival empires of the 1700s. It explores how the states prepared for war, what kind of economic means they had, what institutional changes they implemented, and how efficient this was. As such, the book presents the first comparative synthesis aiming to un

Spis treści

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Three powers looking for resources

Spain and its eighteenth-century rivals

War and the early modern state

Method and timeframe

1 Changing strategies and global power in the long eighteenth century

1.1 The long consequences of Utrecht

1.2 Warfare interests and motives

1.3 Spain in eighteenth-century international politics

2 Eighteenth-century realities and historiographical approaches

2.1 Absolutism vs. parliamentarism

2.2 The eighteenth-century military revolution

2.3 The increasing war cost

2.4 Fiscal-military states: the development of a methodological concept

3 Administering the fiscal-military state: ordinary revenues – trusting in a consumer’s world

3.1 The increase in the tax trawl

3.2 The fiscal structure: direct or indirect taxes

3.3 Divergent paths: the trend of the fiscal structure in the long eighteenth century

3.4 Tobacco and metals, the pearls of the Empire

3.5 Possibilities and flexibility of fiscal policies

3.6 Changes in the fiscal structure as from the eighties and the breakdown of some systems

4 Increasing revenue through administration change: direct administration of taxes

4.1 Direct administration vs. tax farming. Why were taxes farmed out?

4.2 England takes the lead

4.3 The impossible reform of the French system

4.4 Spain facing the modernity of direct administration

4.5 Administering to implement a new system

4.6 A political agenda against tax farmers?

4.7 Consequences and stocktaking

4.8 The tax farmers’ profit

4.9 Looking to t

O autorze

A. González Enciso is Professor of Early Modern History at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. His research interests have been focused on the economic history of eighteenth-century Spain, namely industrial and financial history, and he is a member of the international Contractor State Group.