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French Views on Wealth and Taxes from the Middle Ages to the Old Regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Martin Wolfe
Martin Wolfe
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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The belief that the state should, can, and must contrive to make its subjects wealthier, and that in part this can be done through its taxing powers, certainly is one of the most powerful concepts in modern times. Intuitively it seems that this belief must arise from important and strongly rooted developments starting far back in the history of Western thought and institutions. Economic historians concerned with the history of economic growth ought to be able to demonstrate which developments produced this belief, and when. But work on this highly interesting problem of origins has yet to be begun. The dimensions of the problem, at least, can be presented by sketching in the main developments for one country, France, over the whole period from a time when the concept of a beneficent national fisc obviously was still unborn to that point when it was alive and thriving. Viewed as an essay on the history of economic thought, this paper is a suggestion that some of the concepts concerning French mercantilism found in modern writings need to be improved. The questions to be raised are: At what point did influential persons in France begin to argue that by changing its tax policies the state could promote what we call economic growth? And when can we say that an important part of royal fiscal policy was aimed at promoting the wealth of the king's subjects?

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Articles
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1966 , pp. 466 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1966

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References

1 The ability of most French cities to control their economic affairs diminished rapidly after they were absorbed into the royal domain.

2 De Regimine Judaeorum, in Lewis, E., Medieval Political Ideas (London: Rout-ledge, 1954), I, 111.Google Scholar

3 The following discussion is based on my forthcoming work, The Tax System of Renaissance France.

4 In a paper given at the Third International Congress for Economic History (Munich, 08. 1965)Google Scholar I argued that other aspects of mercantilism, also, were absent i n France before the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

5 E.g., Cole, C. W., French Mercantilist Doctrine before Colbert (New York: R. R. Smith, 1931) ch. iGoogle Scholar ; Hauser, H., “La colbertisme avant Colbert,” in Les debuts du capitalisme (new ed.; Paris: Alcan, 1931), pp. 181–82Google Scholar ; Boissonade, Prosper, Le socialisme d'état (Paris: Champion, 1927), pp. 16ff., 96–98Google Scholar , and passim ; Heck-scher, Eli, Mercantilism (2 vols.; rev. ed.; London: Allen & Unwin, 1955), II, 266 and passimGoogle Scholar.

6 Zeller, G., “Aux origines de n6tre systeme douanier: Les premieres taxes a 1'im-portation,” Publications de la Facultd des Lettres de Strasbourg, fasc. 106 (1945–1947), pp. 165–217.Google Scholar

7 Heckscher, II, 273.

8 There is no point in compiling another bibliography on French mercantilism here. The indications in the works of Cole, C. W., Heckscher, Eli, and Spengler, J. J. are more than sufficient. See also the useful notes in Harsin, Paul, Les doctrines monStaires et financidres en France du xvie an xviiie sidcle (Paris: Alcan, 1928)Google Scholar and Rothkrug, Lionel, Opposition to Louis XIV (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Coleman, D. C., “Eli Heckscher and the Idea of Mercantilism,” and Coats, A. W., “In Defense of Heckscher and the Idea of Mercantilism,” both in The Scandinavian Economic History Review, V (1957)Google Scholar ; Heaton, Herbert, “Heckscher on Mercantilism,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. XLV, No. 3 (06 1937)Google Scholar . I have been told that the study of mercantilism is soon to be blessed by the publication of a D. C. Heath booklet in the series, “Problems in European Civilization.”

10 Spengler's, J. J. long and important article on mercantilism, “Mercantilist and Physiocratic Growth Theory,” in Hoselitz, Bert and others, Theories of Economic Growth (Glencoe, III.: The Free Press, 1960)Google Scholar , touches only lightly on mercantilist public finance and not at all on mercantilist views concerning relations between the fisc and the economy. Neither does Jacob Viner in his article “Power vs. Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in his The Long View and the Short (Glencoe, III.: The Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar . But how does one get from “plenty” to “power” if not through royal revenues? The best reference I know to the fiscal elements in mercantilism is Gabriel Ardant's highly stimulating and important study, Théorie sociologique de Vimpdt (2 vols.; Paris: S. E. V. P. E. N., 1965), esp. I, 699–708Google Scholar.

11 Clement, P., ed., Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert (7 vols.; Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1861–!1882), III, Part 1, 37Google Scholar . See also the memoir advising the king not to loan money to the king of Denmark, VI, 231–32.

12 Apparently, before John Law, mercantilist theories ignored both credit and monetary debasements as approved mechanisms for increasing the ability to pay taxes.

13 Clement, VII, item 15, esp. pp. 235–39, 246. This point is explained thoroughly i n our foremost account of Colbertism : Cole, C. W., Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (2 vols.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), I, 340Google Scholar.

14 See esp. Cole, French Mercantilist Doctrines.

15 Projet d'une dixme royale, ed. Coonaert, Emile (Paris: Alcan, 1933), p. xxxix.Google Scholar

16 Heckscher, II, 209–16 and passim.

17 There are countless mercantilist statements to this effect. An interesting and very explicit one is attributed by Colbert to the Crown: Clèment, Lettres, VI, 466–67.

18 This argument can be found in one of the first clear expressions of mercantilist attitudes in France, the findings of an Assembly of Notables in 1583 ; , Cole, French Mercantilist Doctrines, pp. 39–40Google Scholar.

19 Clement, Lettres, III, Part 1, 196.

20 See Rothkrug's interesting analysis of the attempts by anti-mercantilists to oust the Colbertists from royal favor: Opposition, ch. iv and pp. 374 ff.

21 Les soupirs de la France esclave (Amsterdam, probably 1690), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

22 Cole, Colbert. One sometimes sees the ter m “neo-mercantilist” applied to Bois-guilbert and others, but I prefer “anti-mercantilist,” since I want to emphasize their contribution in crying out against the discrepancy between the government's avowed aim to promote economic growt h and the strangulating effects of the government's fiscal system.

23 The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library ed. of 1937), p. 397.Google Scholar

24 Schumpeter, Joseph A., History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.Google Scholar

25 Les soupirs, esp. pp. 21–40.

26 Pierre le Pesant de Boisguilbert, Dissertation sur la nature des richesses (1707?), cited in Daire, Eugéne, ed., Economistes-financiers du xviiie siecle (Paris, 1843), pp. 417–24Google Scholar . This idea is stressed in Boisguilbert's other works and in Vauban.

27 , Quesnay, “General Maxims for the Economic Government of an Agricultural Kingdom,” in Meek, Ronald L. (trans.), The Economics of Physiocracy: Essays and Translations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1962), p. 237.Google Scholar