War was the greatest expense of any early modern state. It often stretched fiscal resources to their limits, forcing statesmen to seek alternative methods for accumulating and managing revenue that challenged traditional systems of collection. Whereas some unpopular avenues pursued for economic growth had detrimental effects on state and society, such as the debasement of coinage and Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, others were significant stimuli for national development, with mercantilism being an important example. Historians have argued since the pioneering work of John Brewer, that the fiscal-military state developed during the second half of the seventeenth century. It is difficult to suggest that it emerged earlier. Even David Parrott's innovative study on the reforms and growth of the French army during the Cardinal de Richelieu's premiership concludes by stressing the financial restrictions of the time. Despite the expansion to military forces, the fiscal demands of the 1630s did not lead to the transformation of the state's financial apparatus. Parrott has argued – and Alan James has reinforced in the case of the navy – that, by the time of Richelieu's death in 1642, France was still encountering one financial crisis after another. These issues were only resolved through short-term solutions, just as their predecessors had practised during the previous century.

With this said, changes to the state's traditional financial apparatus were attempted during this period because of military demands. The Italian Wars (1494 to 1559), the Spanish War (1585 to 1604) and the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648) were long conflicts of attrition, fought at great financial cost. As a response to the longevity of these wars, competing powers were forced to acquire additional revenue that their normal frameworks did not provide, with high-interest loans and ship-money systems being increasingly depended on to fund armed forces.

That new fiscal schemes more often than not failed, as would eventually befall Charles I's ship-money design of the 1630s, is more an indication of political and structural constraints rather than a lack of innovation. Financial reforms that held the potential to alter the traditional socio-economic structure and customs of the state were opposed throughout society.