Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Contributors
- List of Charts and Tables
- Introduction
- 1 The Financial Administration of North Hanseatic Cities in the Late Middle Ages: Development, Organization and Politics
- 2 Government Debts and Credit Markets in Renaissance Italy
- 3 Government Debts and Financial Markets in Castile between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
- 4 Government Debt and Financial Markets: Exploring Pro-Cycle Effects in Northern Italy during the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries
- 5 Government Policies and the Development of Financial Markets: The Case of Madrid in the Seventeenth Century
- 6 The Role Played by Short-Term Credit in the Spanish Monarchy's Finances
- 7 From Subordination to Autonomy: Public Debt Policies and the Creation of a Self-Ruled Financial Market in the Kingdom of Naples in the Long Run (1500–1800)
- 8 Public Debt in the Papal States: Financial Market and Government Strategies in the Long Run (Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries)
- 9 Towards a New Public Credit Policy in Eighteenth-Century Spain: the Introduction of the Tesorería Mayor de Guerra (1703–6)
- 10 French Public Finance between 1683 and 1726
- 11 Long-Term War Loans and Market Expectations in England, 1743–50
- 12 Mercantilist Institutions for the Pursuit of Power with Profit: The Management of Britain's National Debt, 1756–1815
- 13 Italian Government Debt Sustainability in the Long Run, 1861–2000
- 14 Times of Wasteful Abundance: The Apogee of the Fiscal State in the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s
- Conclusion: Final Remarks
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Mercantilist Institutions for the Pursuit of Power with Profit: The Management of Britain's National Debt, 1756–1815
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Contributors
- List of Charts and Tables
- Introduction
- 1 The Financial Administration of North Hanseatic Cities in the Late Middle Ages: Development, Organization and Politics
- 2 Government Debts and Credit Markets in Renaissance Italy
- 3 Government Debts and Financial Markets in Castile between the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
- 4 Government Debt and Financial Markets: Exploring Pro-Cycle Effects in Northern Italy during the Sixteenth and the Seventeenth Centuries
- 5 Government Policies and the Development of Financial Markets: The Case of Madrid in the Seventeenth Century
- 6 The Role Played by Short-Term Credit in the Spanish Monarchy's Finances
- 7 From Subordination to Autonomy: Public Debt Policies and the Creation of a Self-Ruled Financial Market in the Kingdom of Naples in the Long Run (1500–1800)
- 8 Public Debt in the Papal States: Financial Market and Government Strategies in the Long Run (Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries)
- 9 Towards a New Public Credit Policy in Eighteenth-Century Spain: the Introduction of the Tesorería Mayor de Guerra (1703–6)
- 10 French Public Finance between 1683 and 1726
- 11 Long-Term War Loans and Market Expectations in England, 1743–50
- 12 Mercantilist Institutions for the Pursuit of Power with Profit: The Management of Britain's National Debt, 1756–1815
- 13 Italian Government Debt Sustainability in the Long Run, 1861–2000
- 14 Times of Wasteful Abundance: The Apogee of the Fiscal State in the Federal Republic of Germany from the 1960s to the 1980s
- Conclusion: Final Remarks
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Rise of Britain's Fiscal Naval State
In outline (if not in the chronological detail required for a complete and satisfactory historical narrative) the reasons why the United Kingdom evolved, between the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Congress of Vienna of 1815, into the most powerful fiscal military state in Europe have become clearer since Peter Dickson inaugurated the modern debate with the publication of The Financial Revolution in England some four decades ago. That seminal book (subtitled ‘A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756’) directed attention to the economic and geopolitical significance of a political consensus and network of institutions for the accumulation of a national debt required for the rise of British power.
Over the long eighteenth century public debt increased from a nominal capital of under £2 million in the reign of James II to reach an astronomical level of £854 million or 2.7 times the national income when Lord Liverpool's administration returned the monetary and financial system to the gold standard in the aftermath of the Napoleonic War. Up to 85 per cent of the money borrowed as long-term loans or raised as short-term credit between 1688 and 1815 was allocated to fund a sequence of costly armed conflicts against enemies who threatened the security and stability of the realm, as well as the kingdom's rivals who challenged its mission to command the oceans, engaged in mercantilistic competition with British businessmen for the profits of global commerce, or obstructed the nation's ambitions for colonization overseas.
The institutionalization of public debt was but one symptom and sinew of a combined financial, fiscal and naval strategy for the projection of British power overseas. State debts could only be accumulated, sustained and serviced by revenues from taxation assessed and collected with difficulty from the realm's evolving but narrow fiscal base and recalcitrant bodies of taxpayers.
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- Government Debts and Financial Markets in Europe , pp. 179 - 208Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014