Constructing a Fiscal Military State in Eighteenth Century Spain

Constructing a Fiscal Military State in Eighteenth Century Spain PDF

Author: Rafael Torres Sánchez

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-25

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1137478667

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Historically, Spain has often been represented as a financial failure, a state limited by its absolutist monarchy and doomed to fiscal and financial failure without hope of lasting growth. The collapse of the Spanish state at the beginning of the nineteenth century would seem to bear out this view of the limitations of Spain's absolutist state, and this historical school of thought presents the eighteenth century as the last episode in a long history of decline that is directly linked to the failure of the sixteenth-century Spanish imperial absolutist monarchy. This study provides a different perspective, suggesting that in fact during the eighteenth century, Spain's fiscal-military state was reconstructed and grew. It shows how the development of the Spanish fiscal-military state was based on different growth factors to those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and that with this change, most of the state's structure and its relationship with élites and taxpayers altered irrevocably. In the ceaseless search for solutions, the Spanish state applied a wide range of financial and fiscal policies to expand its empire. The research in this book is inspired by current historical discussions, and provides a new perspective on the historical debate that often compares English 'success' with continental 'failure'.

The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe PDF

Author: Christopher Storrs

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 1317031652

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In recent decades, historians of early-modern Europe, and above all those who study the eighteenth century, have elaborated the concept of what has been called the 'fiscal-military state'. This is a state whose international effectiveness was founded upon the development of large armed forces, whose performance and supply necessitated both further administrative development and the provision of large sums, the raising of which involved unprecedented levels of taxation and borrowing by governments. The present collection of essays, by leading authorities in their individual fields, all of whom have published widely on their chosen topic, explores the subject of the fiscal-military state by focusing on its leading exemplars in eighteenth-century Europe: Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and Russia. It also includes a chapter on the Savoyard state (the kingdom of Sardinia), a lesser power whose career illuminates by comparison developments elsewhere. In addition, and rather unusually, a further chapter considers the fiscal-military state in a broader, comparative international context, in the arena of international relations. Each chapter provides a summary of the state of knowledge regarding the fiscal-military state debate insofar as it relates to the state under consideration. As well as contributing to that debate, they take matters further by systematically analysing the sources of wealth and income, and the way these were tapped, and the broader impact that this attempt to extract resources had on society and the state, both in the short and longer term. The differing patterns, and the variety of models of fiscal-military state makes for ease of comparison across Europe, making the volume an invaluable resource to both students and researchers alike.

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century PDF

Author: Rafael Torres Sánchez

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-07-14

Total Pages: 507

ISBN-13: 019108672X

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Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century offers a new approach to the relationship between warfare and state construction. Historians looking at how war funding impinged on state development, and how state growth made wars more significant, have tended to downplay the role of military-provisioning entrepreneurs. Written off as corrupt and selfish, these entrepreneurs jarred with the received view of a rationally growing and modernising state. This volume shows that the state-entrepreneur relationship was much more fluid and constant than previously thought. The state was not able to enforce a top-down military supply policy; at the same time it benefited from the entrepreneurs' collaboration and their shared mercantilist ambitions. The entrepreneurs' mobilisation of military supplies was crucial for extending state authority and helped to knit together national and colonial markets. But this fluid state-entrepreneur relationship gradually became shrouded in privileges and monopolies, not so much ideology driven or imposed by the entrepreneurs but rather as an arrangement exploited by the state to boost its control over them, whittling down middlemen and ensuring the solvency and creditworthiness of the chosen few. This arrangement spiralled into a risky inter-dependence and cramped entrepreneurial competition. Rafael Torres Sánchez furnishes new insights into the role of military entrepreneurs in debates about warfare and state construction.

Constructing a Fiscal Military State in Eighteenth Century Spain

Constructing a Fiscal Military State in Eighteenth Century Spain PDF

Author: Rafael Torres Sánchez

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-25

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1137478667

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Historically, Spain has often been represented as a financial failure, a state limited by its absolutist monarchy and doomed to fiscal and financial failure without hope of lasting growth. The collapse of the Spanish state at the beginning of the nineteenth century would seem to bear out this view of the limitations of Spain's absolutist state, and this historical school of thought presents the eighteenth century as the last episode in a long history of decline that is directly linked to the failure of the sixteenth-century Spanish imperial absolutist monarchy. This study provides a different perspective, suggesting that in fact during the eighteenth century, Spain's fiscal-military state was reconstructed and grew. It shows how the development of the Spanish fiscal-military state was based on different growth factors to those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and that with this change, most of the state's structure and its relationship with élites and taxpayers altered irrevocably. In the ceaseless search for solutions, the Spanish state applied a wide range of financial and fiscal policies to expand its empire. The research in this book is inspired by current historical discussions, and provides a new perspective on the historical debate that often compares English 'success' with continental 'failure'.

Distant Tyranny

Distant Tyranny PDF

Author: Regina Grafe

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-01-08

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 0691144842

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Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at the same time the Castilian capital city of Madrid drew resources from surrounding Spanish regions as it pursued its quest for centralization. According to this view, powerful Madrid thwarted trade over large geographic distances by destroying an integrated network of manufacturing towns in the Spanish interior. Challenging this long-held view, Regina Grafe argues that decentralization, not a strong and powerful Madrid, is to blame for Spain's slow march to modernity. Through a groundbreaking analysis of the market for bacalao--dried and salted codfish that was a transatlantic commodity and staple food during this period--Grafe shows how peripheral historic territories and powerful interior towns obstructed Spain's economic development through jurisdictional obstacles to trade, which exacerbated already high transport costs. She reveals how the early phases of globalization made these regions much more externally focused, and how coastal elites that were engaged in trade outside Spain sought to sustain their positions of power in relation to Madrid. Distant Tyranny offers a needed reassessment of the haphazard and regionally diverse process of state formation and market integration in early modern Spain, showing how local and regional agency paradoxically led to legitimate governance but economic backwardness.

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century

Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century PDF

Author: Rafael Torres Sánchez

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0191086711

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Military Entrepreneurs and the Spanish Contractor State in the Eighteenth Century offers a new approach to the relationship between warfare and state construction. Historians looking at how war funding impinged on state development, and how state growth made wars more significant, have tended to downplay the role of military-provisioning entrepreneurs. Written off as corrupt and selfish, these entrepreneurs jarred with the received view of a rationally growing and modernising state. This volume shows that the state-entrepreneur relationship was much more fluid and constant than previously thought. The state was not able to enforce a top-down military supply policy; at the same time it benefited from the entrepreneurs' collaboration and their shared mercantilist ambitions. The entrepreneurs' mobilisation of military supplies was crucial for extending state authority and helped to knit together national and colonial markets. But this fluid state-entrepreneur relationship gradually became shrouded in privileges and monopolies, not so much ideology driven or imposed by the entrepreneurs but rather as an arrangement exploited by the state to boost its control over them, whittling down middlemen and ensuring the solvency and creditworthiness of the chosen few. This arrangement spiralled into a risky inter-dependence and cramped entrepreneurial competition. Rafael Torres Sánchez furnishes new insights into the role of military entrepreneurs in debates about warfare and state construction.

A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe

A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe PDF

Author: Silvia A. Conca Messina

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-24

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 042965152X

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Why was early modern Europe the starting point of the economic expansion which led to the Industrial Revolution? What was the state’s role in this momentous transformation? A History of States and Economic Policies in Early Modern Europe takes a comparative approach to answer these questions, demonstrating that wars, public finance and state intervention in the economy were the key elements underlying European economic dynamics of the era. Structured in two parts, the book begins by examining the central issues of the state–economy relationship, including military revolution, the fiscal state and public finance, mercantilism, the formation of commercial empires and the economic war between Britain and France in the 1700s. The second part presents a detailed comparison between the different economic policies of the most important European states, looking at their unique demographic, economic, military and institutional contexts. Taken as a whole, this work provides a valuable analysis of early modern economic history and a picture of Europe’s global position on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. This book will be useful to students and researchers of economic history, early modern history and European history.

Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats

Officers, Entrepreneurs, Career Migrants, and Diplomats PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-08-29

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 9004700854

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“Money, money, and more money.” In the eyes of early modern warlords, these were the three essential prerequisites for waging war. The transnational studies presented here describe and explain how belligerent powers did indeed rely on thriving markets where military entrepreneurs provided mercenaries, weapons, money, credit, food, expertise, and other services. In a fresh and comprehensive examination of pre-national military entrepreneurship – its actors, structures and economic logic – this volume shows how readily business relationships for supplying armies in the 17th and 18th centuries crossed territorial and confessional boundaries. By outlining and explicating early modern military entrepreneurial fields of action, this new transnational perspective transcends the limits of national historical approaches to the business of war. Contributors are Astrid Ackermann, John Condren, Jasmina Cornut, Michael Depreter, Sébastien Dupuis, Marian Füssel, Julien Grand, André Holenstein, Katrin Keller, Michael Paul Martoccio, Tim Neu, David Parrott, Alexander Querengässer, Philippe Rogger, Guy Rowlands, Benjamin Ryser, Regula Schmid, and Peter H. Wilson.

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