Determinants of the Growth of the State: War and Taxation in Early Modern France and England

Although the causal impact of war on state-making in the early modern era is now widely accepted, there is less consensus about the way in which war affects levels of taxation, and the factors that might strengthen or weaken the relationship. Two questions can be posed: Do individual wars produce im...

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Veröffentlicht in:Social forces 2001-12, Vol.80 (2), p.411-448
Hauptverfasser: Kiser, Edgar, Linton, April
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Although the causal impact of war on state-making in the early modern era is now widely accepted, there is less consensus about the way in which war affects levels of taxation, and the factors that might strengthen or weaken the relationship. Two questions can be posed: Do individual wars produce immediate effects on taxes, or is the cumulative effect of long periods of warfare more important? How do variations in administrative capacity and the strength of representative institutions affect the extent to which war pushes the growth of the state? This article attempts to answer these questions with a quantitative analysis of the effects of war on taxation in early modern England and France. We find that the cumulative effect of war is strong in both cases, suggesting that war made states via a "ratchet effect," and that this effect is much stronger when the administrative capacity of states is improved by centralization and bureaucratization. Strong representative assemblies decrease the effect of war on state growth in France but increase it in England, due to the very different characteristics of these institutions in the two countries.
ISSN:0037-7732
1534-7605
DOI:10.1353/sof.2001.0099