Dissecting the Sinews of Power: International Trade and the Rise of Britain's Fiscal-Military State, 1689-1823

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Oxford; University of Oxford; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Leibniz Association; Ifo Institut
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050725000117
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 336-369
• 关键词: industrial-revolution; ECONOMIC-GROWTH; taxation; COMMITMENT; EVOLUTION

摘要

We evaluate the role of taxes on overseas trade in the development of imperial Britain's fiscal-military state. Influential work, for example, Brewer's Sinews of Power, attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of domestic, rather than traded, goods: excise revenues, coarsely associated with domestic goods, grew faster than customs revenues. We construct new historical revenue series disaggregating excise revenues from traded and domestic goods. We find substantial growth in revenue from traded goods, accounting for over half of indirect taxation around 1800. This challenges conventional wisdom, attributing the development of the British state to domestic factors. International factors mattered, too.