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

Abstract

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?