ABSTRACT
This chapter explores another form of international exchange: mutual observation or, more specifically, the use of foreign examples in fiscal debates in France in the wake of the Seven Years' War. In order to bring deliberations about fiscal reform back from the public sphere to the internal process of the ministerial bureaucracy and reclaim royal authority over fiscal matters, Laverdy used a stick and carrot' approach. In the course of the Seven Years' War the deficit had grown rapidly and had reached threatening levels. But despite the sympathy with the French magistrates, only one year after the end of the Seven Years' War the main concern was with the question of how the troubles would affect the external strength' of France. At the same time the origins of the revolution were intimately linked with a culture of public debate which was fuelled, in large part, by fiscal debates.
