War, Power and the Economy

A. González Enciso is Professor of Early Modern History at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. His research interests have been focused on the economic history of eighteenth-century Spain, namely industrial and financial history, and he is a member of the international Contractor State Group.

• List of figures List of tables Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Three powers looking for resources Spain and its eighteenth-century rivals War and the early modern state Method and timeframe 1 Changing strategies and global power in the long eighteenth century 1.1 The long consequences of Utrecht 1.2 Warfare interests and motives 1.3 Spain in eighteenth-century international politics 2 Eighteenth-century realities and historiographical approaches 2.1 Absolutism vs. parliamentarism 2.2 The eighteenth-century military revolution 2.3 The increasing war cost 2.4 Fiscal-military states: the development of a methodological concept 3 Administering the fiscal-military state: ordinary revenues – trusting in a consumer’s world 3.1 The increase in the tax trawl 3.2 The fiscal structure: direct or indirect taxes 3.3 Divergent paths: the trend of the fiscal structure in the long eighteenth century 3.4 Tobacco and metals, the pearls of the Empire 3.5 Possibilities and flexibility of fiscal policies 3.6 Changes in the fiscal structure as from the eighties and the breakdown of some systems 4 Increasing revenue through administration change: direct administration of taxes 4.1 Direct administration vs. tax farming. Why were taxes farmed out? 4.2 England takes the lead 4.3 The impossible reform of the French system 4.4 Spain facing the modernity of direct administration 4.5 Administering to implement a new system 4.6 A political agenda against tax farmers? 4.7 Consequences and stocktaking 4.8 The tax farmers’ profit 4.9 Looking to t