Introduction: The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

Christopher Storrs
I Historians have long acknowledged the crucial importance of finance in the development of the modern state. Indeed, public (and private) finance has been at the heart of the work of a number of historians, including the honorand of the present collection, Professor P.G.M. Dickson (whose achievement is discussed more fully below). In recent decades, however, and partly in consequence of the emergence of what has been labelled the new fiscal history, new concepts of the state have been coined more explicitly recognizing this fact. Historians have charted the transition over a long period from what has been called the tribute state to the domain state, in which most royal revenue derives from private domain and regalian rights, and from the latter to the tax state or fiscal state, in which the majority of such income comes from taxation, and although many of those who have used the term fiscal state have this implicitly in mind to what might be thought of as the final refinement of the latter, the so-called fiscal-military state. This latter formulation was applied to eighteenthcentury Britain by John Brewer in his The Sinews of Power (1989), a milestone work which was stimulated by, and was also a counter to, P.G.M. Dicksons argument that Great Britains success was founded upon the establishment of a funded national debt, backed by parliament and supported by regular taxation; Brewer, by contrast, noted that borrowing only paid for 3040 per cent of war costs across the long eighteenth

 I should like to thank my colleague at the University of Dundee, Dr Martine van Ittersum, and Professor Hamish Scott, for commenting on an earlier version of this essay. Any errors remain my responsibility.  E. Ladewig Petersen, From Domain State to Tax State. Synthesis and Interpretation, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 1975, pp. 11548. The identification of the concept of the tax state and of the transition to it is widely attributed to an essay of 1918 written by Joseph Schumpeter against the background of the defeat of the Central Powers in the First World War. See R. Bonney, ed., The Rise of The Fiscal State in Europe, c. 12001815 (Oxford, 1999), p. 13; J. Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe. Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 15001660 (London, 2002), p. 225.  Cf. P.K. OBrien and P.A. Hunt, Excises and the Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 15861688, in M. Ormrod et. al., Crises, Revolutions and Self-Sustained Growth: Essays in European Fiscal History (Stanford, 1999); J. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995), p. 145.  Brewer, J., The Sinews of Power. War, Money and the English State, 16881783 (London, 1989).

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century (Dicksons figure) and pointed to taxation as more important. The importance of Brewers study was immediately acknowledged as such by other historians. The term, fiscal-military state, has since become widely used by historians to describe not only Britain, but also the continental European states in the eighteenth century and in the preceding ones, either in the formulation of the fiscal-military or sometimes the military-fiscal state. Although this latter has rather different implications for some historians an issue discussed more fully below it has also been applied to the international struggle in which those states were caught up.10 Clearly, Brewers fiscalmilitary state fulfilled a need felt by many historians of eighteenth-century Britain and Europe and, indeed. early modern Europe as a whole for a label with which to designate certain distinctive, even defining, features of those states, and one which possibly reflects the way in which similar labels have been applied to states in the later twentieth century, including, for example, that of the industrial-military complex.11 The development and application of the concept of the fiscal-military state was clearly intended to relate the evolution of the state or states so designated, and their fiscal systems, or fiscal constitutions as they have sometimes been designated, to the fact that these were largely shaped by the demands of war in an era in which warfare had been transformed or was in a process of flux. Historians have long acknowledged the enormous changes in the way in which war was conducted from the late fifteenth century, although they are not entirely sure whether this can be called a Military Revolution as Michael Roberts designated it half a century ago. Nor assuming the term revolution is an appropriate one to describe a process, or processes, which took decades, even centuries, to work themselves out are all agreed about precisely when it occurred. For Roberts and others, the Military Revolution happened between 1560
 P.G.M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 16881756 (London, 1967).  Cf. J. Hoppit, review of Brewer, Sinews of Power, and of D.W. Jones, War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough (Oxford, 1988) ), Historical Journal, 33 (1990), pp. 24850.  Cf. in general, C. Jones, The Great Nation. France from Louis XIV to Napoleon (London, 2003), p. xxi; and, for France, J. Swann, The State and Political Culture, in W. Doyle, ed., Old Regime France (Oxford, 2001), p. 151ff. Bonney, Rise of the Fiscal State, p. 10, observes that the emergence of the fiscal-military state is now a historiographical truism applied to the evolution of European states in general.  Cf. M. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 15501700 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 177, 270, 278ff.; Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe, passim.  For the most part, the precise formulation is not important, not indicating any fundamental divergence: Braddick, State Formation, p. 7, refers to the military-fiscal, and elsewhere to the fiscal-military state. Similarly, C.A. Bayly, The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 17501820, in L. Stone, ed., An Imperial State at War. Britain from 1689 to 1815 (London), p. 32, clearly has in view the fiscal-military state. 10 M. Kwass, A Kingdom of Taxpayers: State Formation, Privilege and Political Culture in Eighteenth Century France, Journal of Modern History, 70 (1998), p. 301 describes France as engaged in a fiscal-military international struggle in this period. 11 Cf. J. Black, Britain as a Military Power 16881815, Journal of Military History, 64 (2000), p. 159ff (at p. 160).

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

and 1660, but for Jeremy Black it was located in the decades between about 1660 and 1720. Nonetheless, despite these disagreements, all are agreed that the European way of war and the military establishments which the various states maintained were very different in 1700 from what they had been in 1500. Armies were much larger, more complex in composition and structure, and more permanent; they were also much more expensive, not least because they required a whole range of services arms, provisions and other supplies12 all of which required the elaboration of more complex administrative structures and, of course, money to pay the troops and the suppliers. Not surprisingly, these developments also impacted on the wider economy, and society. That military conflict and the resources needed to participate in it was a perhaps the driving element in the emergence of the fiscal-military state(s)13 was not a particularly innovative insight on Brewers part: historians had long acknowledged the way in which war and its demands shaped the (early) modern state,14 and in particular its fiscal structure,15 and continues to do so. However, Brewers identification of the fiscal-military state addressed the experience of a specific eighteenth-century state and an equally specific interpretation of its success. II Brewers conceptualization of the fiscal-military state, which he claimed had been the most important transformation in English government between the Tudor reforms and those of the nineteenth century,16 was explicitly intended to explain Britains extraordinary success in the conflicts of the long eighteenth century (16891815),
12 Cf. D. Parrott, War and International Relations, in J. Bergin, ed., The Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 2001), pp. 12527. 13 M. Roberts, The Military Revolution (Belfast, 1956), reprinted in idem, Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967); G. Parker, The Military Revolution 15601660 A Myth?, Journal of Modern History (1976), reprinted in idem., Spain and the Netherlands 15591659 (London, 1979); J. Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 15501800 (Basingstoke, 1991). Roberts and Parkers contributions are also reprinted in C.J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate. Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe (Boulder, CO and Oxford, 1995). 14 J. Vicens Vives, The Administrative Structure of the State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, in H.J. Cohn, ed., Government in Reformation Europe 152060 (London, 1971), p. 5887; G. Ardant, Financial Policy and Economic Infrastructure of Modern States and Nations, in C. Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1975), pp. 164220; C. Tilly, War Making and State Making as Organised Crime, in P.B. Evans et al., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 16991; M. Mann, Sources of Social Power, I: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (Cambridge, 1986). 15 G. Parker, The Emergence of Modern Finance in Europe, 15001750, in C.M. Cipolla, ed., The Fontana Economic History of Europe, 2 (London, 1974);W. Reinhard, KriegsstaatSteuerstaatMachtstaat, in R.G. Asch and H. Duchhardt, eds, Der Absolutismus ein Mythos? Strukturwadel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und Mitteleuropa ca. 15501700 (Cologne, 1996), pp. 277310. 16 Brewer, Sinews of Power, p. xvii.

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the era of what has been called its second Hundred Years War against France, from which Britain emerged as a global power. Brewers British fiscal-military state comprised various elements: (1) the development of a substantial military (but, above all, naval) establishment, the total of men in both fighting forces increasing from an annual average of over 116,000 in the Nine Years War (168897) to one of more than 190,000 in the American War of Independence;17 (2) the rocketing costs of war, with average annual expenditure increasing from almost 5.5 million in the Nine Years War to over 20 million in the American War, and of maintaining the enlarged war machine in peacetime; (3) the importance of government borrowing that is obtaining credit to fund that spending in the short term (especially in wartime), the debt rising to 16.7 million by the end of the Nine Years War and rocketing to just under 243 million by the end of the American War, underpinned by; (4) the expansion of tax revenues, the total of which rose from just over 3.6 million in the Nine Years War to just over 12 million in the American War, to replace other revenue streams which were increasingly unable to cover these costs; (5) taxation which was at first direct (typified by the land tax), but the burden of which was shifted by government towards indirect impositions (notably the Excise, hence the revenue service which looms so large in John Brewers study), until the 1780s and 1790s when Pitts First Coalition undermined the financial system and triggered the introduction of Income Tax; (6) the elaboration of remarkably effective new administrative structures to oversee both the expanding military establishment and the fiscal one, the number of full-time employees in the fiscal bureaucracy increasing from 2,524 in 1690 to 8,292 in 178283, when the excise employed 4,908 that is, well over half the total such that this was a fiscal-military state, revolving around the military and its revenue officials. Finally, these developments largely rested on the achievement of political stability (from 1688) and on the emergence of a new relationship between society and state, which ensured that the developing fiscal and state structure were accepted by the population as a whole.18 Brewers explanation of the rise of Great Britain in the eighteenth century was a deliberate challenge to a long-established and deeply entrenched meta-narrative of two different paths to modernity: that of the British state, supposedly constitutional, libertarian and parliamentary, and in which the hand of authority lay light, and the continental or European model, supposedly absolutist and bureaucratic, where the hand of the state lay much heavier. Brewers study demonstrated, on the contrary, that constitutional Britain was more effectively bureaucratic and more heavily taxed than was absolutist France in the eighteenth century. Whereas previous historians, beginning with Otto Hintze perhaps the doyen of comparative constitutional historians a century or so ago had thought of Britain as a state with hardly any of the bureaucratic institutions which supposedly characterized the absolutist European states, Brewer argued that the British state in fact enjoyed a very efficient (tax17 For the following figures, cf. Brewer, Sinews of Power, pp. 30, 66. See also R. Porter, English Society in the 18th Century (revised ed., London, 1991), pp. 11617, E. Hellmuth, The British State, in H.T. Dickinson, ed., A Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain (Oxford, 2002), p. 19ff., and P.K. OBrien, Finance and Taxation, in Dickinson, Companion, p. 30ff. 18 Cf. Black, Britain as a Military Power, p. 159.

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collecting) machine mainly in the form of the excise administration: as Brewer rather provocatively put it, the English excise more closely approximated to Max Webers ideal of bureaucracy than any other government in eighteenth-century Europe.19 III Despite its generally positive reception and impact, Brewers vision of the fiscalmilitary state has prompted some debate insofar as it sought to encapsulate the eighteenth-century British state.20 For example, OBrien (who prefers to speak of the fiscal state) explicitly downgrades the role of the Revolution of 1688 in underpinning the achievement of eighteenth-century Britain and instead sees the crucial foundations as having been laid in the middle decades of the seventeenth century,21 a view largely shared by Braddick and Wheeler.22 It has also been suggested that Brewer exaggerates the efficiency of the excise23 and that he takes insufficient account of the persistence of older, less effective branches of administration.24 Noteworthy, too, is the fact that Brewers focus is overwhelmingly on England, and largely neglects the way in which Scotland was incorporated into the emerging British fiscal-military state following the Union of 1707. Although Scotland contributed relatively little in fiscal terms, its incorporation was of crucial strategic importance as it enabled that state to refocus its attention and energy outside Britain, towards Europe and overseas.25 However, the relevance of Brewers analysis and implicit (and explicit) comparison of developments in Britain with the latters European neighbours and rivals has attracted far less attention.26 This is unfortunate because, in many respects, Brewers laudable efforts at comparison with those continental competitors to some extent caricatures the experience of the latter. And, if Brewers conceptualization of the British state is intended to explain Britains unique, exceptional situation and success a problematic subject which continues, not surprisingly, to attract attention27 then we need to look more closely at the alternative versions of that state. Some continental politicians saw Britain and its institutions as a model to be imitated. In 1786, for example, Count Zinzendorf, president of the Austrian
19 Brewer, Sinews of Power, p. 68. Cf. Hellmuth, The British State. For Hintze, cf. Wilson, below, p. xx. 20 Stone, Imperial State at War, passim. 21 OBrien, Finance and Taxation passim. 22 M.J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 15581714 (Manchester, 1996); J.S. Wheeler, The Making of a World Power. War and the Military Revolution in C17 England (Stroud, 1999). 23 Cf. J. Hoppit, review of Brewer, Sinews of Power, note 4 above; and J. Black, review of ibid., English Historical Review, 105 (1990), Pp. 69597. 24 Hellmuth, British State, p. 26ff. 25 Cf. C.A. Whatley and D.J. Patrick, The Scots and the Union (Edinburgh, 2006), p. 322ff. 26 But see the essays in J. Brewer and E. Hellmuth, eds, Rethinking Leviathan: The Eighteenth Century State in Britain and Germany (New York, 1999). 27 Cf. The contributions to L. Prados de la Escosura, ed., Exceptionalism and Industrialisation. Britain and its European Rivals, 16881815 (Cambridge, 2004).

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Hofrechnenkammer, urged Joseph II to introduce a sinking fund modelled on that recently introduced in Britain by William Pitt the Younger, in order to reduce the national debt.28 Zinzendorfs proposal got nowhere, not least because the situation of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy was not that of Britain and different measures were therefore appropriate in that polity. The British model was equally unsuitable for most of the other European states.29 Hence there is a need for a more wideranging and up-to-date comparative study of the varieties of fiscal-military state in the long eighteenth century in Europe. IV Comparative studies of the fiscal systems of many of the states caught up in the international struggle in the early modern era already exist. However, while admirable, these works suffer various defects. On the one hand there are a number of very geographically narrowly focused comparisons, which look at just a very few states. These include Jan Gletes perceptive comparative study of Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as three variations on the fiscal-military state between the middle of the sixteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century.30 Equally narrow are those studies which look simply at Britain and Germany (and, above all, at Prussia), largely within the polar framework referred to earlier.31 Finally there is perhaps the most frequent of narrow comparisons, that between Britain and France, favoured because of their rivalry throughout the century, the triumph of Britain during that struggle, although it might be thought that France in view of its size and natural resources ought to have come off best, and the general assumption that the differing experiences of the rivals had much to do with their differing political systems.32 On the other hand there are the very broad surveys over long periods of time, exemplified by the various volumes co-ordinated by Richard Bonney who, for over a decade, has directed a project seeking to write a new fiscal history of Europe from the medieval to the modern era.33 The output of this enterprise, is impressive,
28 P.G.M. Dickson, Count Karl von Zinzendorfs New Accountancy: The Structure of Austrian Government Finance in Peace and War, International History Review, 29 (2007), pp. 2256, p. 39. 29 The practices of the earlier Dutch fiscal-military state offered another model: cf. R. Bonney, The Eighteenth Century. II. The Struggle for Great Power Status and the End of the Old Fiscal Regime, in R. Bonney, ed., Economic Systems and State Finance (Oxford, 1995), p. 324 for Louis XIVs dixime (1710). 30 Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe. 31 Cf. G.R. Elton, review of Tilly, The Formation of National States, Journal of Modern History, 49 (1977), pp. 29498; and H.M. Scott, review of Brewer and Hellmuth, Rethinking Leviathan, American Historical Review, 106 (2001), pp. 24345. 32 Cf. R. Bonney, Towards the Comparative Fiscal History of Britain and France during the Long Eighteenth Century, in De la Escosura, Exceptionalism and Industrialisation, p. 191ff. 33 Bonney, ed., Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe; cf. also G. Lewis, Fiscal States: Taxes, War, Privilege and the Emergence of the European Nation State c. 12001800, French Historical Studies, 15 (2001), pp. 5163.

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but in some respects insufficiently systematic. Thus, The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 12001815 (1999) includes case studies of a dozen or so states or regions, including England, France, Castile, the Holy Roman Empire, the Low Countries, Switzerland, Italy, Russia and PolandLithuania, but lacks uniformity. While the chronological and geographical ranges are impressive, the absence of indepth coverage of some important states is unfortunate. So, too, is the fact that the individual chapters lack a common approach, or model, or criteria in identifying the different fiscal systems of the states which are their subject(s). In consequence, comparison of both income and expenditure is difficult.34 Other collections, too, are weakened by serious omissions: thus, a recent and otherwise important study of fiscal crises in early modern Europe omits Italy (or rather the various Italian states), Austria and the German states.35 Finally, in many of these comparative studies there is a curious absence (or rather matter-of-fact treatment) of armies, war and the crucial international relations background which is at the heart of the phenomenon of the fiscal-military state. Brian Downing seeks to relate developing fiscal systems and their politicalconstitutional implications to the demands of war, and ranges relatively widely,36 but he also largely neglects the fighting which was a crucial activity of the fiscal-military state. This book seeks to remedy these deficiencies and to offer a collection of more chronologically focused, in-depth studies of a limited number of key states the main players in the long eighteenth century.37 V Why the long eighteenth century (16881815)? For one thing, this was an age of recurring warfare, or rather of war which seriously tested the capacity or capacities of the participant states38 and effectively gave rise to the fiscal-military state, although it was arguably the experience of the cycle of wars which ended in 165960 which provided the initial push.39 The Nine Years War (168897), The War of the Spanish Succession (170113/14), the War of the Polish Succession (173335/38), the War of the Austrian Succession (174048), the Seven Years War (175663) and a host of others which were not so geographically wide-ranging or so long-lasting or so
34 Cf. P.T. Hoffman, review of Bonney, Rise of the Fiscal State, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 32 (2001), pp. 28283. 35 Cf. T.F. Mayer, review of P.T. Hoffman and K. Norberg, eds, Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government 14501789 (Stanford, CA, 1994), Sixteenth Century Journal, 26 (1995), pp. 49798. 36 B.M. Downing, The Military Revolution and Political Change. Origins of Democracy and Autocracy in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ, 1992). Black makes the point too one made in this collection by Scott that there is very little about war in Brewer. 37 L. Neal, The Monetary, Financial and Political Architecture of Europe, 16481815, in Prados de la Escosura, Exceptionalism and Industrialisation, pp. 17390, represents a very helpful step in this direction, but only discusses a very few of the relevant states and in little detail. 38 Cf. J. Beckett and M. Turner, Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth Century England, English Historical Review, 43 (1990), p. 378. 39 Parrott, War and International Relations, pp. 12627.

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demanding, notably the War of the Quadruple Alliance (171820) which, perhaps surprisingly, failed to ignite into a wider European conflagration, and the War of the Bavarian Succession (177879). Some have seen a relaxation of the scale of war between 1713/21 and 1792 (the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars) but nonetheless war even the rather neglected War of the Polish Succession and peacetime defence were at a new pitch of demand.40 Associated with these conflicts was the fact that the age saw, it has been argued, the emergence or rise of a narrow group of just five or six Great Powers,41 which, if any states fitted the bill, were indeed had to be if they were to survive and succeed fiscal-military states. The eighteenth century was an era in which, initially at least, a number of secondary powers played important roles, including, for example, the Savoyard state, which thus justifies its place in this collection, although, as time went on, the Great Powers pulled away from the rest. In addition, and despite the many lacunae and defects in the surviving evidence, the records are simply fuller, in part reflecting the fact that, in some states at least, fiscal and military structures and systems were more fully developed more mature than before. It has also been suggested that the eighteenth century witnessed a decisive breakthrough in the centralization and concentration of power, a development said to have been accompanied and underpinned by a revolution in political thinking which prioritized sovereignty and whose agent was the state, which needed appropriately educated (literate) agents.42 It is also arguable that the eighteenth century was more clearly and self-consciously interested in fiscal-military issues than were earlier ones: from the earlier political arithmeticians who flourished in England in the late seventeenth century men like Locke, Davenant and King43 and continued to do so after 1700 to the great surveys and projects mounted by various European states following the conclusion of the Seven Years War, which to some extent shaped the phenomenon that we call enlightened despotism in continental Europe and which also helped trigger the revolt of the New England colonies against British dominion.44 Indeed, among the issues which engaged and stimulated the emergent public opinion Habermass public
40 J.R. Western, War on a New Scale: Professionalisation in Armies, Navies and Diplomacy, in A. Cobban, ed., The Eighteenth Century (London, 1969). 41 Cf. D. McKay and H.M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers 16481815 (Harlow, 1983), passim; H.M. Scott, The Birth of a Great Power System 17401815 (Harlow, 2006), p. 1ff. 42 T.C.W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture. Old Regime Europe 16601789 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 11618. 43 Cf. J. Hoppit, Political Arithmetic in Eighteenth Century England, Economic History Review, 49 (1996), pp. 51640. 44 Cf. P.C. Hartmann, Das Steuersystem der europischen Staaten am Ende des Ancien Regime. Eine offizielle franzsische Enquete (17631768). Dokumente, Analyse und Auswertung: England und die Staaten Nord-und Mitteleuropas (Zurich and Munich, 1979); A. Alimento, Riforme fiscali e crisi politiche nella Francia di Luigi XV. Dalla taille tariffe al catasto generale, (Firenze, 1995). For similar British interest at this time, cf. George Pitt to Egremont, 5 Feb. 1763, Turin, SP 92/70, and Dutens to Halifax, 6 Feb. 1765, Turin, SP 92/71. British diplomats continued to send information of this sort from Turin for the rest of the century. In general, cf. also H. Klueting, Die Lehre von der Macht der Staaten. Das aussenpolitische Machtproblem in der politischen Wissenschaft und in der praktischen Politik

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sphere were precisely those of finance and new fiscal burdens.45 Yet, whereas the French finances have attracted a great deal of attention from historians, who see this as a crucial factor in bringing on the revolutionary upheaval of 1789, those of most of the other European states have been neglected by historians until recently; and some still are. Finally, just as the years after 1688 saw the rise of the fiscal-military state in its eighteenth-century incarnation, so the wars fought between 1789 and 1815 saw the culmination of that model and also, arguably, the emergence of another. VI This collection of essays on individual states seeks to contribute to the discussion of the fiscal-military state. The first of these is a splendid preliminary tour dhorizon by Hamish Scott who sets the fiscal-military state in broad international context. Then, in a chronologically and thematically wide-ranging piece one which challenges some established views about the military weight and credibility of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy Michael Hochedlinger considers the transformation of that composite state into a considerable military power by the end of the eighteenth century and its paradoxical prussianization as it adopted the elements of a fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century. In an equally wide-ranging contribution, Peter Wilson, in a study of what was probably the greatest success story of the century after Britain, suggests, in Chapter 3, that the Prussian state was not quite as absolute or strong in imposing military obligations or taxation on its subjects and concludes with the rather paradoxical observation that its success as a fiscal-military state depended on avoiding war. Effectively making Scotts point about the way in which financial strength might determine the length and outcome of war, Wilson observes that Prussias lack of other resources (not least credit) sometimes decisively shaped its wartime strategy. Wilsons contribution also illuminates some of the other German states and helpfully identifies the immaterial resources available to successive Holy Roman emperors in their dealings with Prussia and those other states. In Chapter 4 Janet Hartley considers that other expansionist power of the age, Russia (arguably a military-fiscal state and raises in the course of her discussion a number of issues about the impact on the broader society militarization and so on of Russias emergence as a major power. This is followed by an essay by Jol Flix and Frank Tallett, which considers the experience of France, from the construction of a distinctive and highly successful version of the fiscal-military state under Louis XIV to its demise in the later eighteenth century and re-emergence in a new guise after 1789. Then, in a piece which, in some respects, picks up the story of the British fiscal-military state where Brewer left it (at the end of the American War of Independence), Patrick OBrien (who has done as much as anybody to write the
im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1986). For one Austrian minister with a statistical bent, Count Karl von Zinzendorf, cf. P.G.M.Dickson, Count Karl von Zinzendorfs New Accountancy. 45 Cf. W. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (3rd edn, Oxford, 1999), p. 45ff ; T.J. Le Goff, How to Finance an Eighteenth-century War, in Ormrod, Crises, Revolutions, pp. 38586.

10

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history of that state46) looks at the way in which Britain fought, or rather funded, the 20-year struggle against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. This more focused investigation throws much interesting light on the difficulties facing ancien rgime governments in forecasting and collecting revenues. More importantly perhaps, it also suggests that, during the period under consideration, there was an important shift in the foundations of the British fiscal-military state, away from wartime borrowing towards taxation and also in the direction of taxation (the income tax of 1799) which affected the elites in a rather new way. Finally, turning to the only example of a minor power, one which was nevertheless a fiscal-military state in its own way, Christopher Storrs, in Chapter 7, considers the experience of the Savoyard state, whose success up until 1748 was largely underpinned by the elaboration of a fiscal-military superstructure.47 However, it is also very clear that the Savoyard state was cushioned by the subsidies offered by a number of the other fiscal-military states, as were some of the other lesser (and even some of the greater) states.48 For such states, effective diplomacy might be a crucial arm of the fiscal-military superstructure. VII Not all the states of eighteenth-century Europe were fiscal-military states. But all of the leading powers were, and most of these are dealt with in this collection. Inevitably, not all states can be considered, and some are omitted. The omissions include what had been two of the leading fiscal-military states before the eighteenth century, Sweden and the Dutch Republic, the latter emerging as a fiscal-military state in order to succeed in its revolt against Spanish rule.49 In the first decades of the eighteenth century both of these powers effectively abandoned any aspiration to be a fiscal-military state. In the case of Sweden this followed a humiliating defeat
46 P.K. OBrien, The Political Economy of British Taxation, 16601815, Economic History Review, New Series, 41 (1988), pp. 132; idem, Public Finance in the Wars with France 17931815, in H.T. Dickinson, ed., Britain and the French Revolution 17891815 (Basingstoke, 1989), pp. 16587; idem, The Rise of the Fiscal State in England, 14851815, Historical Research, 66 (1993), pp. 12976; idem, Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State and the Expansion of Empire, 16881815, in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), pp. 5377; idem., Fiscal and Financial Preconditions for the Rise of British Naval Hegemony 14851815, LSE Department of Economic History Working Papers in Economic History, 91/5 (2005). 47 For the need to pay greater attention to the smaller states, cf. P. Wilson, War, State and Society in Wurttemberg, 16771793 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 1ff. (and passim for a German example of the phenomenon). 48 For the Wittelsbachs, cf. P.C. Hartmann, Geld als Instrument Europischer Machtpolitik im Zeitalter des Merkantilismus (Munich, 1978); A. Schmid, Max III. Joseph und die europischen Machte. Die Aussenpolitik des Kurfrstentums Bayern von 17451765 (Munich, 1987). 49 M van t Hart, The Making of a Bourgeois State: War, Politics, and Finance during the Dutch Revolt (Manchester, 1993); Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe, p. 140ff.

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11

and the loss of empire in a major conflict, the Great Northern War, whereas the Dutch Republic, arguably the first fiscal-military state, abdicated after its largely successful, but very costly, participation in the War of the Spanish Succession; thereafter, while Dutch investors played an important role in sustaining the credit of other fiscal-military states, the republic itself was not one, despite a continued powerful economic position up until c. 1740.50 Portugal perhaps merits consideration as a lesser fiscal-military state.51 That states neighbour in the Iberian peninsula, Spain the first fiscal-military state according to Glete, who also regards it as a unique case of the decline of a fiscal-military state before 170052 cannot be ignored. Despite its losses in Europe in the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain remained the greatest of the imperial powers throughout the period and, in the generation after 1713, it was perhaps the most serious threat to peace in Europe. It is therefore unfortunate that Spain, which emphatically was a fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century, is omitted, although a contribution was originally intended.53 Something must therefore be said about it here.
50 J. Aalbers, De Republiek en de Vrede van Europe, 1: Achtergronden en algemeene aspecten (Groningen, 1980); idem, Hollands Financial Problems (17131733) and Wars against Louis XIV, in Britain and the Netherlands, 6 (1977), pp. 7993; A.J. Veenendaal, Fiscal Crises and Constitutional Freedom in the Netherlands, 14501795, in P.T. Hoffman and K.T.Norberg, Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government (Stanford, 1994), p. 96ff; J.I. Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 14771806 (Oxford, 1995), p. 959 ff; J. De Vries, The Netherlands in the New World, in M.D. Bordo and R. CortesConde, eds, Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World. Monetary and Fiscal Institutions in the 17th through the 19th Centuries (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 1323; J.C. Riley, Dutch Investment in France, 17811787, Journal of Economic History, 33 (1973), pp. 73260. 51 Cf. J. Braga de Macedo, A. Ferreira da Silva and R. Martins de Sousa, War, Taxes, and Gold. The Inheritance of the Real, in Bordo and Cortes-Conde, Transferring Wealth and Power, pp. 187228; and J.M. Pedreira, Costs and Financial Trends in the Portuguese Empire, 14151822, in F. Bethencourt and D. Ramada Curto, eds, Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 14001800 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 4987. 52 Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe, pp. 29, 67. 53 For what follows, cf. H. Kamen, War of Succession in Spain 17001715 (London, 1969), pp. 200 330, 35460: Gelabert, p. 230; P. Fernandez Albaladejo, El decreto de suspension de pagos de 1739, Moneda y Credito, 142 (1977), pp. 5185 ; M. Artola, La Hacienda del Antiguo Regimen (Madrid, (1982), p. 224ff; J.A. Barbier and H.S. Klein, Revolutionary Wars and Public Finance: The Madrid Treasury, 17841807, Journal of Economic History (1981), pp. 31539; and idem, Las Prioridades de un Monarca Ilustrado: El Gasto Publico bajo el Reinado de Carlos III, Revista de Historia Economica (1985), pp. 47395; P. Bakewell, A History of Latin America (Oxford, 1997), 256ff.; A.J. Kuethe and G.D. Inglis, Absolutism and Enlightened Reform: Charles III, the Establishment of the Alcabala and Commercial Reorganization in Cuba, Past and Present, 109 (1985), pp. 11843; C. Marichal and M. Carmagnani, Mexico. From Colonial Fiscal Regime to Liberal Financial Order, 17501912, in Bordo and Cortes-Conde, Transferring Wealth and Power, p. 284ff.; C, Marichal, Bankruptcy of Empire. Mexican Silver and the Wars between Spain, Britain and France, 17601810 (Cambridge, 2007). Cf. also G. Tortella and F. Comin, Fiscal and Monetary Institutions in Spain (16001900), in Bordo and Cortes-Conde, Transferring Wealth and Power, pp. 14086; R. Torres Sanchez, Possibilities and Limits: Testing the Fiscal Military State in the Anglo-

12

The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

The loss of costly overseas (European) territories during the War of the Spanish Succession offered an opportunity to reduce defence costs, but Philip V and his second wife, Isabel Farnese, were determined to reassert Spanish power in the western Mediterranean in general (including Africa) and, above all, in Italy. To pursue these objectives they oversaw a transformation and increase in the size of Spains army (now a Spanish army in a way it had not been before 1700 and underpinned by the creation of new provincial regiments in 1734) and of its navy (the latter largely the achievement of Jos Patio). Expenditure also grew. In part, the burden of defence was met by extracting greater revenues from the territories of the Crown of Aragon, which had contributed little before 1700, but whose loyalty to Philips rival, the Archduke Charles (Emperor Charles VI) in the War of Succession, enabled the first Bourbon king to assert a right of conquest once those territories were recovered, and to increase the tax burden in the form of the nica contribucin in Aragon and the catastro in Catalonia, modelled on the equivalente in Valencia, an achievement which had eluded Philips Habsburg predecessors. However, the main fiscal burden was still carried, as in the past, by Castile. Some of the gap was also closed by more effective administration, partly achieved by the introduction of French-style intendants. But still crucially important were the revenues from Spanish America or the Indies which had not been lost in the War of the Spanish Succession the most distinctive (indeed unique) revenue stream of the Spanish fiscal-military state, although the eighteenth century saw Perus contribution overtaken by that of New Spain (Mexico), the combined total of the two viceroyalties greatly exceeding their combined seventeenth-century silver output. Despite all these resources and the various extraordinary devices resorted to in wartime, the Spanish Crown was obliged to declare bankruptcy in 1739, following its participation in the War of the Polish Succession and as conflict opened with Britain in the Caribbean. Thereafter, and particularly after 1748, efforts were made to claw back control of revenues which had hitherto been farmed and to reform the complex fiscal structure, although efforts to introduce a simpler fiscal measure - the so-called single tax proved abortive. Nevertheless, like so many of the other states discussed in this collection, the experience of the Seven Years War prompted an extension of the key ingredients of the fiscal-military state permanent armed forces and funding via new taxation to Spanish America. Credit was as important to the Spanish monarchy as to most of the other states under consideration in this volume. At the start of the eighteenth century this largely meant the juro obligations which were inherited from the Habsburgs, but which were substantially reduced by Philip V and his successors. However, from the 1780s, and impelled above all by participation in the American War of Independence, Charles IIIs government introduced the so-called vales reales, state bonds. But the real determinant of Spains fiscal fortunes and its aspirations to be a major power was its ability to exploit the wealth of the Indies. Once communications between the two were cut by British sea-power from the 1790s, Spain was obliged to either mobilize the wealth of peninsular Spain, resorting to increasingly radical measures or to effectively abandon
Spanish War of 17791783, in idem, ed., War, State and Development: Fiscal-Military States in the Eighteenth Century (Pamplona, 2007), pp. 43760.

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

13

any pretensions to power. The achievement of Spanish-American independence by c. 1825 undermined Spains ambition to remain a major power, exposing the fact that, although it was a fiscal-military state, it had depended too much on its colonial wealth and had failed to tap sufficient domestic sources through either tax or credit. VIII The example of Spain suggests, as do those of Britain and France (but not those of the other states discussed in this volume), the importance of connecting the discussion of the fiscal-military state with some of the other concerns of contemporary historiography, including both empire and globalization. The various contributions to this book also prompt a number of observations on the fiscal-military state and the debates surrounding it. On the one hand, despite the supposed maturity of the fiscal systems of many states around 1700, we still often lack essential, reliable source materials from which to draw firm, safe conclusions about income and expenditure. This is often due simply to the destructive impact of war, revolution, natural disaster and simple neglect on the crucial records.54 On the other hand, and paradoxically, the abundance of surviving documentation generated by different parts of what could be very complex fiscal structures (and which might effectively bypass central accounting and recording agencies) can produce a baffling array of varying, and sometimes conflicting, figures, which also make the drawing of reliable conclusions and interpretation problematic.55 In addition there was sometimes deliberate contemporary obfuscation, efforts to mislead a prince or public about the financial situation and/or the operations of a predecessor, not least where there was a public appetite for this sort of information, such as in the more sophisticated societies of western Europe. Whatever the reason, we must recognize that the figures which go to make up eighteenth-century government or public finances, like those of earlier and, indeed, later centuries, cannot always be taken at face value.56 That said, armies were larger and more permanent than before, requiring permanent supply and funding on an unprecedented scale. To meet these demands there was a definite expansion of government spending and income in the long eighteenth century. Even taking into account the reality of inflation, most states witness the kingdom of Sardinia grew their revenues. This was a secular tendency, but was often achieved rather erratically, and expansion was generally most striking, indeed dramatic, in wartime. (Indeed, both expenditure and revenue often fell sharply at the end of a conflict, although expanding military and naval establishments tended to keep both at a high level). War fuelled the fiscal-military state for two basic reasons. First, it incurred an increase in spending, not least on the very expensive process of mobilization, in the opening years. Second, however, there was the established convention that wartime
54 For France, cf. J.C. Riley, French Finances, 17271768, Journal of Modern History, 59 (1987), pp. 20943 at pp. 21516); for Austria, cf. Dickson, Austrian Government Finance, p. 24. 55 In 1783 Count Zinzendorf complained of the disorder in the Austrian accounting system; see Dickson, Austrian Government Finance, p. 29. 56 Bonney, The Eighteenth Century. II, p. 325.

14

The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

was an emergency in which the monarch or state could legitimately call on subjects to make a greater fiscal contribution, to fund the defence of the polity.57 It must also be admitted that, while war did generally stimulate the development of the fiscal-military state, it could also retard its progress in this respect, as, for example, when a prince or state alienated (or sold) basic tax revenues to fund credit operations.58 Similarly, there was no single innovation which created the fiscal-military state but, rather, a continual adaptation to changing circumstances.59 In that sense, individual fiscal-military states were in a constant process of development. Brewers concept of the fiscal-military state emphasized the enormous importance of organization, which sometimes resulted in public revenues growing at more than the rate of general economic development; in such cases, the state would be pressing harder on the economy. This is a salutary insight, and relevant not only to eighteenthcentury Britain.60 Everywhere, improved procedures could increase revenue, in part by eradicating evasion, malpractice and other forms of wastage,61 and, in that process, even reduce the real fiscal burden for the population at large. Not surprisingly other historians of the (fiscal-military) state have also acknowledged the importance of organization in different types of society the less commercialized societies of central and eastern Europe and the more trade-oriented and wealthy ones in western Europe.62 However, we should not exaggerate the organizational success of the eighteenthcentury fiscal-military state or ignore the persistence of inefficiency, corruption and waste, all of which pushed up administrative costs: according to Count Zinzendorf, in 1782, 26 per cent of gross revenue in the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy was either absorbed by collection costs or retained by the provincial estates.63 And, although we certainly need to avoid simplistic explanations of the rise and fall of powers in terms of simple economic strength,64 we should also be wary of ignoring the fact that, in many states, revenues and the ability to supply armies continued to depend on not only the
57 J. Lindegren, Men, Money and Means, in P. Contamine, ed., War and Competition between States (Oxford, 1995), p. 130. 58 G. Lewis, Fiscal States: Taxes, War, Privilege and the Emergence of the European Nation State, c. 12001800, French History, 15 (2001), p. 54; Daryl Dee, Wartime Government in Franche-Comt and the Demodernisation of the French State, 17041715, French Historical Studies, 30 (2007), p. 21ff., focusing very specifically on the fiscal administration of Louis XIVs monarchy in the War of the Spanish Succession, sees regression. 59 Bonney, The Eighteenth Century. II, p. 388. 60 Jan Glete, in his War and the State in Early Modern Europe, which focuses on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and on Spain, Sweden and the Dutch Republic has sought to give a very distinctive explanation of the origins, function and success of this early version of the fiscal-military state, urging the importance neither of coercion nor of consent, but instead emphasizing the role of organization, of the aggregation of interests and the FM state as a seller of protection. 61 For the Austrian accounting system, cf. Dickson, Austrian Government Finance, p. 24. 62 Cf. C. Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European states AD 9901992 (Oxford, 1992), passim; R.G. Asch, Kriegsfinanzierung, Staatsbildung und stndische Ordnung im Westeuropa im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Historische Zeitschrift, 268 (1999), pp. 63571. 63 Dickson, Austrian Government Finance, p. 24. 64 This, broadly speaking, is the thrust of Paul Kennedys The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (London, 1988).

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

15

annual harvest, but also on the broader economic environment, buoyancy and growth. Britains achievements could not have been made without its extraordinary economic success in the eighteenth century. The most successful fiscal-military states enjoyed, or sought to stimulate, economic growth. For example, Prussia, a truly poor (and small) state, was unlikely to break through to fiscal-military state status and, if it had done so, its hold on that position might have been tenuous. Equally important was territorial growth. Expansion of this sort carried costs: new territories often rendered redundant existing networks of defences on which large sums had been spent in the past, and generally necessitated new spending on a new defensive configuration. Nevertheless, new territories often meant additional tax and other revenues. The most striking example of this is perhaps Prussias acquisition of Silesia, whose loss was a severe blow to and resented by Maria Theresia and her ministers; their determination to recover that resource-rich territory helped to shape policy in central Europe for almost a generation. But it was by no means the only example of the sort in eighteenth-century Europe.65 A crucial aspect of the fiscal-military state, as conceived by Brewer and others, was access to credit. Indeed, it has been suggested that the key to success was not so much the introduction of, often ingenious, new taxes and other means of instant wealth extraction as the development of new techniques for mobilizing credit.66 This was certainly the case, the century witnessing a remarkable expansion of credit and debt across Europe. However, credit was a complex issue, and many aspects of the expansion of government borrowing require further study. There was a big difference, for example, between merely allowing pension, salary and other arrears to accumulate and a properly funded debt that paid interest. Different states exploited different sources of credit, although we should not exaggerate the diversity. And, while credit is widely regarded as having underpinned military performance, little attention has been paid to the extent to which military success and/or failure could also affect the ability of a prince or state to obtain credit.67 Instead, a great deal of attention has been given to the debated question about just how far certain types of regime were more or less likely to secure loans. It is almost a clich that constitutional, representative regimes and, above all, the political system which developed in Britain in the wake of the revolution of 1688, one in which the monarch was obliged to establish a working relationship with parliament are good for credit. Equally firmly rooted appears to be the view that supposedly absolute regimes particularly the French Bourbon monarchy were much less well placed to secure credit because the monarch could simply default and renege on his obligations to borrowers in a way in which the British monarch could not.
65 Bonney, The Eighteenth Century. II, p. 333. 66 G. Parker, Introduction: The Western Way of War, in idem, ed., The Cambridge History of Warfare (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 89. Cf., for example, Swedens career as a great power, as analysed by Jan Lindegren, The Swedish Military State 15601720, Scandinavian Journal of History, 10 (1985), p. 319. 67 Cf. K.F. Helleiner, The Imperial Loans. A Study in Financial and Diplomatic History, as reviewed by P.G.M. Dickson, Economic History Review, New Ser., 1 (1966), pp. 20910; and J.F. Bosher, review of Bonney, Rise of the Fiscal State, American Historical Review, 105 (2000), pp. 137274.

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The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

However, such views,68while broadly true,69 are far too simplistic. Thus, Mark Potter and Julian Swann have put forward cogent arguments which suggest that Louis XIV and his successors were able to tap the credit of corporate bodies, including provincial estates and venal officers institutions whose (privileged) existence was an essential, defining characteristic of the Bourbon absolute monarchy.70 Underpinning credit were the expanding revenues, the basis of the eighteenthcentury fiscal-military state, and, above all, taxation. But taxation covered a wide variety of different types of imposition, the most important distinction, of course, being between the direct (land tax, or poll tax, or capitation) and the indirect (excises, levied on articles of consumption); just how that tax was levied, received and administered above all, whether collection should be farmed was another crucial variable. The preference for one type of fiscal system, one type of financial underpinning rather than another what has been called the fiscal constitution of a given regime or state might reveal a great deal about the character of the state under consideration and the real distribution of power within it.71 Once again, although Brewer and others have emphasized the extent to which British taxpayers were obliged to pay, whereas in continental Europe the price of absolutism was the recognition of fiscal privilege, it is increasingly apparent that for example, in France, with the capitation, dixime and vingtime impositions the fiscal-military state was eroding (or rather chipping away at) tax exemption, such that the fiscal burden was growing there, as elsewhere.72 One of the most remarkable problems thrown up by the emergence of the fiscalmilitary state is why its growing demands it imposed (for men required to serve on land and at sea, money and the hidden cost of the demand for manpower involved in obligatory work on fortifications, the purchase of substitutes and the compulsory appropriation of draught animals) did not provoke more resistance. Certainly there was some resistance, which might occasionally explode into something more serious one example being the Mondovi salt rebellion in Piedmont , but there was much less than might have been expected. The answer may lie in the fact that the fiscal-military state did not seek to do everything itself, but delegated many tasks. These might include, for example, allowing local communities to select the recruits they were obliged to supply for the army; in this way, those communities (or their
68 Cf. Blanning, Culture of Power, p. 309. 69 Cf. the marques of Ensenada to Ferdinand VI of Spain, 1748, as cited in Artola, Hacienda, p. 316. 70 M. Potter, Good Offices: Intermediation by Corporate Bodies in Early Modern French Public Finance, Journal of Economic History, 60 (2000), pp. 599626; J. Swann, Provincial Power and Absolute Monarchy. The Estates of Burgundy, 16611790 (Cambridge, (2003). Cf. also T.E. Kaiser, Money, Despotism, and Public Opinion in Early Eighteenth-Century France: John Law and the Debate on Royal Credit, Journal of Modern History, 63 (1991), p. 1ff. 71 J.V. Beckett, Land Tax or Excise: the Levying of Taxation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century England, English Historical Review, 100 (1985), pp. 285308; C. Brooks, Public Finance and Political Stability: The Administration of the Land Tax, 16881720, Historical Journal, 17 (1974), pp. 281300. 72 Cf. Kwass, Kingdom of Taxpayers, passim. Of course, the overall burden was still overwhelmingly supported by the non-privileged.

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

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elites) were able to take the opportunity to get rid of undesirables. In this sense, as Glete argues, the improved organization which was the apparent hallmark of the fiscal military state meant that the subject population was, in some respects, less burdened.73 Mention has already been made of the fact that some historians prefer the term military-fiscal state and have in mind a state rather different from the fiscalmilitary. The military-fiscal state, it is suggested, was one which, although relatively poor in terms of the fiscal resources needed to sustain a large army, could nonetheless effectively hire out its forces to another power: this meant that those troops thus became a source of income and were effectively self-supporting.74 This concept has been elaborated very largely on the basis of the example of Hesse-Kassel, the small German state whose landgrave supplied the British government with troops throughout the eighteenth century, such that the British fiscal-military state subsidized taxpayers in Hesse-Kassel,75 but Wrttemberg might also be said to fit the bill of a military-fiscal state defined in this way.76 The term could also justifiably be applied to a number of other German states, too, and even to the Savoyard state. It might also be used, as Hamish Scott suggests, to describe the less economically advanced eastern powers. As for the western powers Britain and to a lesser extent France and Spain the importance of their navies suggests that they might be better described as fiscal-naval states.77 IX So far, we have focused on the elements of the fiscal-military (or military-fiscal) state without really challenging its relevance. However, we need to be more critical. The achievement of fiscal-military status was often a rough ride. This was certainly the case for the British state in the 1690s, in what was arguably the formative stage of the emergence of the English/British fiscal-military state.78 Nor, thinking more broadly and taking the long eighteenth century as a whole, did the elaboration of the trappings of the fiscal-military state guarantee success in war, in the field or on the seas,79 as Jeremy Black, perhaps the most formidable critic of the concept of
73 Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe, pp. 2930. 74 P.K. Taylor, Indentured to Liberty. Peasant Life and the Hessian Military State (Ithaca, NY and London, 1994), p. 5. 75 C. Ingrao, The Hessian Mercenary State (Cambridge, 1987). 76 Wilson, War, State and Society, passim. 77 Cf. Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe, p. 40. Hence the title of Maritime Power applied to Britain (and previously to the Dutch Republic as well) and of which the French were apparently jealous, cf. Villettes to Essex, 29 May 1735, Turin, SP 92/39. 78 D.W. Jones, War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough; J. Hoppit, Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 16801790, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), p. 308. 79 J. Black, Britain as a Military Power 16881815 (London, 1999); idem, Britain as a Military Power, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 26 (2003), pp. 189202;

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the fiscal-military state,80 not least because of the wide-ranging and systemic nature of his attack, has observed. Blacks critique of the fiscal-military state thesis has largely focused upon it as an explanation of Britains success, but it is applicable to the continental European states as well. Money was certainly not everything.81 Nor was it enough simply to have a large army or fleet; success in war depended on their effective use and this in turn required good strategic thinking and leadership. The importance of structural foundations implicit in the notion of the fiscal-military state should not be allowed to obscure the importance of individuals, that is, the individual princes and ministers who directed policy and ran the institutions armies, navies, treasuries and so on in the fiscal-military states. On the positive side, the crucial role of personality is perhaps best exemplified in the eighteenth century by Frederick the Great of Prussia, whose determination contributed enormously to the rise and survival of Prussia. But examples can also be found among the second-rank states. The rise of the Savoyard state up until c. 1748 owed a great deal to the energy, intelligence and legacy of Victor Amadeus II of Sardinia; the decline of that state in the second half of the century cannot be separated from the weaker leadership of some of his successors. Equally, the failure of Bavaria to rise owed much to the poor decisions of successive Wittelsbach rulers. Apart from the quality of individual princes, the dynasties from which they sprang continued to remain a focus of loyalty, unity and coherence in what were often still very fragmented states and polities still far from our own rather abstract understanding of what a state should be or look like. Last, but by no means least, in emphasizing the significance of underpinning administrative, financial structures we should not underestimate the importance of mere contingency, as Black has again forcefully contended. Blacks own possibly excessive preoccupation with events has its own weaknesses, but his criticisms remind us that we should not exaggerate the success(es) of the fiscal-military state(s), many of which experienced severe financial crises, in wartime or promptly thereafter.82 Mention has already been made of Britains difficulties in the Nine Years War. During that same conflict, Louis XIV found himself unable to maintain both a great army and a great navy and effectively abandoned the great fleet developed since 1660, relying instead on privateers to fight the war at sea83 something which happened again in the mid-eighteenth century.84 The resort
idem, Empire-Building and the Problems of Analysis: The Case of Britain, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 27 (2004), pp. 15771. 80 Cf. J. Black, review of West, Gunpowder, Government and War in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1991), English Historical Review, 110 (1995), p. 206. 81 D. Baugh, Naval Power: What Gave the British Navy Superiority?, in Prados de la Escosura, Exceptionalism and Industrialisation, p. 235ff, also makes the point that the success of the British navy in the eighteenth century owed something to money, but something, too, to other factors. 82 J. Hoppit, Financial Crises in Eighteenth-Century England, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), p. 39ff. These were not always crises of public finance. See also Hoffman and Norberg, Fiscal Crises, Liberty. 83 Cf. G. Symcox, The Crisis of French Sea Power 16881697 (The Hague, 1974). 84 Cf. J.R. Dull, The French Navy and the Seven Years War (Lincoln and London, 2005).

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

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to privateers, licensed by the state but otherwise largely independent of it, although largely confined to the maritime powers, also demonstrates, paradoxically, that war could seriously strain the structure of the fiscal-military state to near breaking point.85 British efforts to impose fiscal-military measures in New England triggered the American War of Independence, while defeat in that conflict led many to believe that Britains career as a power was finished and that the debt which Brewer and others see as the foundation of its rise was a potentially disastrous burden rather than a remarkable achievement to be admired. The efforts of Charles III of Spain to do the same in Spanish America also stimulated resistance, albeit less serious in the short term. Nevertheless, while subjects might resent the new burdens, the emphasis must be on the way in which very few fiscal-military states failed to rise to or to overcome the challenge. The real test for the fiscal-military states discussed in this volume came with the French Revolution. The new French state, and the Napoleonic state that succeeded it, was a new type of fiscal-military state (arguably, with the mobilization of in effect the entire population for in the so-called leve en masse of August 1793, more a military-fiscal state), which in many respects transformed the way in which war was conceived and fought, and its challenge its success (amply demonstrated in Chapter 5 by Frank Tallett and Joel Felix) necessitated major, qualitative changes on the part of some of the ancien rgime fiscal-military states. In this sense, and despite the triumph of the old over the new fiscal-military state, it is arguable that the first 25 years of the 1790s witnessed the fall of the old-style fiscal-military state and the emergence of a new type or style one more clearly and narrowly founded on the mobilization of men and economic resources.86 Just as the birth of the fiscal-military state was often a traumatic process so was its demise or later transformation. It is worth observing, finally, that any attempt to give eighteenth-century states a single, all-embracing, defining label, while it has beneficially stimulated interest in the fiscal experiences of those states,87 is also bound not only to distort, but also to risk exaggerating one aspect or function of the early modern state, and to forget or omit others which are, or were, at least equally important.88 While focusing on the role of the fiscal and military elements, we should beware of seeing the eighteenthcentury state as simply or only a fiscal-military state.89 We should not ignore the importance of other factors, including, on the one hand, what some historians have labelled the police state and, on the other hand, what others have identified as
85 Dickson, Austrian Government Finance, pp. 4647. 86 Scott, Birth of a Great Power System, p. 6. 87 Hoffman and Norberg, Fiscal Crises, Liberty. 88 A.L. Fell, Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State: Vol. 5: Modern Origins, Developments, and Perspectives against the Background of Machiavellism. Book II: Modern Major Isms (17th18th Centuries) (Westport, CT, 1996). 89 E. Le Roy Ladurie, The Ancien Regime. A History of France 16101774 (Oxford, 1996), p. 439, speaks of Colbert advancing the Finance-State at the expense of the JusticeState but Collins, State in Early Modern France, p. 145, believes that the term financial state is a useful one to apply to the French polity as long as we use it to denote the emphasis of that state rather than as an exclusive category or label.

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The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Europe

the cultural impulse in state creation or development.90 Tim Blanning, for example, has emphasized the cultural aspects of authority and power, and the importance of getting subjects to accept the obligation of taxation, both Britain and Prussia apparently being more successful in this than was France which allegedly failed to move on in the eighteenth century from the court culture created by Louis XIV.91 For his part, Tony Claydon has argued that Englands (or Britains) Protestant culture, reinvigorated in 1688, underpinned its emergence as a major power in Europe thereafter.92 Without wishing to open up the complicated and debated question of just how to define the state,93 we must acknowledge that there are many issues surrounding the eighteenth-century state that merit fuller discussion. We need, for example, to know more about the social and cultural impact of the emergence of the fiscal-military state.94 On the one hand there were the social and political tensions generated by the new demands discussed above, as well as the new wealth created by that polity.95 On the other hand there was, for example, the impact of conscription on the structure of households and marriage patterns and that of changing fiscal demands on patterns of commercialization, consumption, monetization and so on, a subject touched on by Patrick OBrien in Chapter 6. X This collection of essays was conceived, as has already been mentioned, as a tribute to the scholarship of Professor P.G.M. Dickson because, without his pioneering work on state finance in war and peace in the eighteenth century, the notion of the fiscalmilitary state would be difficult to maintain.96 Professor Dicksons engagement with financial history has been enduring and wide-ranging. It began with the Sun Fire Insurance Office,97 Dickson locating the early history of that organization in the formative period of British insurance that is, the boom years between 1680 and 1750. But Dicksons first major work and perhaps his most important was his pioneering monograph on the Financial Revolution in England in the generations after 1688,98 a study which is still the most important single contribution to our
90 Scott, Birth of a Great Power System, p. 6. 91 Blanning, Culture of Power, pp. 35, 354 (British success against France), 419 (France) and passim. 92 T. Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 16601760 (Cambridge, 2007). 93 Cf. The contributions of Gunn, Brewer and Hellmuth, in Brewer and Hellmuth, Rethinking Leviathan; and of Brewer and Innes in Stone, Imperial State at War. 94 Cf. Speck, review of C. Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance. Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1994), English Historical Review, 112 (1997), pp. 20708; and Hoppit, Attitudes, passim. 95 Hoppit, Attitudes, p. 305ff. 96 In a review of Stone, Imperial State at War, English Historical Review, 111 (1996), p. 75354, Black suggests that Stones Introduction neglects the historiographical contribution of Dickson in urging that of Brewer. 97 P.G.M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance Office 17101960. The History of Two and a Half Centuries of British Insurance (Oxford, 1960). 98 Dickson, Financial Revolution in England.

The Fiscal-Military State in the Long Eighteenth Century

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understanding of British public credit and finance in the eighteenth century, and which, in typical Dickson style, was founded on a meticulous detailed study of the records of the key institutions: the Bank of England, the treasury, the exchequer and so on.99 This work, widely acknowledged at the time as definitive,100 was promptly followed by a magisterial co-authored essay on war finance in general at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.101 Having established his credentials as the leading authority on the intricacies of English public finance and of the wartime fiscal policies of some of the leading participants in the Nine Years War and War of the Spanish Succession, Dickson then turned his attention to the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy in the eighteenth century. He began with an essay on Anglo-Austrian trade negotiations in the middle of the century102 and then published a remarkable and pioneering two-volume study of the finances of Maria Theresias Austrian Habsburg Monarchy between 1740 and 1780, which appeared in 1987.103 As with Dicksons earlier work, this too was painstakingly scholarly and has also been widely hailed as the definitive study of its subject witness the comments of many of the contributors to this volume. Besides continuing to explore this subject,104 Professor Dickson has also begun to investigate and open up the finances (and related areas) of the reign of Maria Theresias son Joseph II, including the Church,105 land reform,106 the bureaucracy107 and, more recently, the very structure of Austrian government finance in the 1780s.108 Dickson is typically modest about his work, but his fellow historians recognize and acknowledge his outstanding achievement and its enormous significance.109 It
99 Cf. comments of H. Roseveare, The Financial Revolution 16601760 (Harlow, 1991), p. vi. 100 Cf. review by Charles Wilson, Economic History Review, NS, 20 (1967), pp. 39698. 101 P.G.M. Dickson and J. Sperling, War Finance 16891714, in J.S. Bromley, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 6: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 16881725 (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 284315. 102 P.G.M. Dickson, English Commercial Negotiations with Austria, 17371752, in A. Whiteman, J.S. Bromley and P.G.M. Dickson, eds, Statesmen, Scholars and Merchants: Essays in Eighteenth Century History Presented to Dame Lucy Sutherland (Oxford, 1973), pp. 81112. 103 P.G.M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresia, 17401780, 2 vols (Oxford, 1987). 104 P.G.M. Dickson, Baron Bartenstein on Count Haugwitzs New System of Government, in T.C.W. Blanning and D. Cannadine, eds, History and Biography: Essays in Honour of Derek Beales (Cambridge,1996), pp. 520. 105 P.G.M. Dickson, Joseph IIs Reshaping of the Austrian Church, Historical Journal, 36 (1993), pp. 89114 . 106 P.G.M. Dickson, Joseph IIs Hungarian Land Survey, English Historical Review, 156 (1991), pp. 61134. 107 P.G.M. Dickson, Monarchy and Bureaucracy in Late Eighteenth Century Austria, English Historical Review (1995), pp. 32367. 108 Dickson, Count Karl von Zinzendorfs New Accountancy, pp. 2256. 109 Cf. G. Klingenstein, Revisions of Enlightened Absolutism: The Austrian Monarchy is Like No Other , Historical Journal, 33 (1990), pp. 155ff.; and, typically, the comments on the significance of the work in H.M. Scott, ed., Enlightened Absolutism. Reform and

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is remarkable that, having transformed our understanding of one subject British public credit in the first half of the eighteenth century the same historian has then gone on to revolutionize our grasp of a very different one the finances of the Austrian Habsburgs in the later eighteenth century. The massive archival research underpinning these impressive contributions in two distinct fields is very unusual in a present-day historian. The financial records of the eighteenth century are very difficult for later generations to interpret: there were no regular budgets until quite late, so the historian has to piece figures together from numerous innumerable scraps. By supplying reliable figures Dickson has provided the crucial raw material for subsequent scholars notably John Brewer to write more generally about public finance. Put simply, much of the financial, and implicitly the broader political history of eighteenth-century Europe would have remained terra incognita without the painstaking, groundbreaking efforts of Peter Dickson.110 This has been a bravura performance on the part of a historian who, for most of his professional life, was a Fellow of Saint Catherines College, Oxford, where he shouldered the usual massive teaching load and tutored generations of Modern History students. At the same time he has given generous and extensive assistance to other scholars in the field help which has been immensely important in the furthering of the subject. The contributors hope that this collection is a fitting tribute to Professor Dickson and his outstanding achievements as a historian of European public finance during the eighteenth century.

Reformers in Later Eighteenth Century Europe (Basingstoke 1990), pp. 325, 329; and of T.C.W. Blanning, Joseph II (Harlow, 1994), p. 209. 110 Brewer generously acknowledges his debt to Dicksons contribution in the Preface to Sinews of Power.