Introduction

Any analysis of the long nineteenth century (1801–1914) in terms of state finance has to consider first the issue of political instability and regime change. Three revolutions, two coups d'état, and three types of regime (monarchical, imperial, and republican) made for critical disjunctures in fiscal policy. To facilitate discussion, the data have been presented in separate tables according to regime. Bruno Théret (1995) argues for a different categorization of disjunctures, between the constitutional monarchies (1815–30, 1831–47, and 1851–70) and the Third Republic (1878–1939), with a significant transitional phase (1871–7) in between. These periods, he argues, can be further subdivided, notably into an opportunist Third Republic (1878–93) and a moderate (1894–1913) and then radical Third Republic (1914–39) (Théret 1995: 58–9). There is no doubt that political instability and regime change were important factors in limiting the possibilities for government innovation in state finance; but in this analysis, two long-term realities are emphasized as of primary importance – first, the failure of population growth in France, in comparison with its economic rivals; and second, the longevity of an oligarchic rentier social order, in spite of the various constitutional crises and regime changes. Thus in France, again in comparison with its two main European economic rivals, Germany and the United Kingdom, the growth of the state was regarded as a serious threat to the economic interests of the ruling social class.

In his recent, globally expansive mode at Oslo, Patrick O'Brien comments that ‘during an “imperial meridian” (1783–1815), European naval and military superiority over the states and societies of other continents emerged as virtually irresistible’. ‘Europeans emerged from that conjuncture in their history’, he states, ‘with massive additions to the populations, territories and natural resources of other continents under their direct or informal control.’ In this account of global history, the word ‘fiscal’, let alone the term ‘fiscal history’, does not occur. Yet if the great work on war and public finance in Britain between 1793 and 1815 has never appeared in book form, Patrick O'Brien has devoted much of his career to such issues, and the term ‘fiscal crisis’ appears elsewhere in his writings. Of Britain's experience in the eighteenth century, he writes (with Philip Hunt), that ‘although politicians worried about it, the national debt went up and up without leading to fiscal crises of the kind that led to changes of regime in France and elsewhere on the Continent’. Historians, he adds, ‘have recognized the obvious relationship between the power of states and the fiscal means at their disposal but they are also aware that the connections were never unitary or simple’.

For Patrick O'Brien, two basic trends in British fiscal history stand out with clarity. The first is that between 1665 and 1790, ‘a period when the kingdom's population and economic base potentially available for taxation remained relatively small compared to France, Russia, the Habsburg Empire and Spain, the amount of taxes which poured into the Exchequer in London multiplied sevenfold in real terms and increased as a share of national income nearly four times’.