ABSTRACT
There is a paradox at the heart of current understandings of the fiscal-military state. In the past two decades, as the scholarship on fiscal-militarism has become more sophisticated, there has been a corresponding shift away from the study of state-raised armed forces. This is not to say that studies of military structures have been neglected by historians or that fiscal policies have unfairly come to dominate discussions of fiscal-militarism. There are very good reasons – exemplified in the work of Patrick K. O’Brien – that the term ‘fiscal state’ is often preferred to ‘fiscal-military state’ as a descriptive appellation for eighteenth-century Britain. The creation of credit institutions, a national debt and a legitimate and effective system of tax collection were the hallmarks of Britain’s ability to compete with the larger continental powers of France and Spain.1
