Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France: Liberté, Égalité, Fiscalité. By Michael Kwass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xvii, 353. $69.95

Mark Potter

The Journal of Economic History, 2001, vol. 61, issue 2, 538-540

Abstract: Historians commonly attribute the origins of the French Revolution to the crown's relative inability to tax members of the elite. The proliferation of tax-exemptions, the argument goes, contributed to the fiscal crisis that brought about the collapse of absolutism. While Michael Kwass sets out to disprove this thesis, taxation nonetheless remains central to his understanding of the Revolution's origins. The crown did indeed succeed in taxing nobles and other members of the privileged elite, he argues, and yet the very debates and contestations that arose from such policies laid the groundwork for a new revolutionary political culture.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:61:y:2001:i:02:p:538-540_23

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().