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  • 2022
  • Chapter
  • Global Taxation: How Modern Taxes Conquered the World

Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule

By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
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Abstract

This chapter explores differences in the making of a ‘modern’ fiscal state under colonial and sovereign rule. Focusing on African and Asian colonies (1820–1970) and their respective European metropoles, it argues that while the introduction of ‘modern’ taxes was part of an imperial diffusion process of fiscal reforms, these new taxes were embedded in a distinctly colonial political, social, and economic logic. In contrast to the imperial metropoles, where ‘modern’ taxes built on organically grown tax bases, fiscal ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’ co-existed in a dualistic system in the colonies. The comparison of fiscal development under colonial and sovereign rule helps to move beyond the Eurocentric bias in the historical tax literature and develop a more global theory of fiscal modernization.

Keywords

Fiscal Modernization; Colonial Rule; Economic History; Sovereign Finance; History; Taxation; Africa; Asia

Citation

Frankema, Ewout, and Marlous van Waijenburg. "Fiscal Development under Colonial and Sovereign Rule." In Global Taxation: How Modern Taxes Conquered the World, edited by Philipp Genschel and Laura Seelkopf, 67–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
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About The Author

Marlous van Waijenburg

Business, Government and the International Economy
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More from the Authors

    • 2023
    • Journal of African History

    Bridging the Gap with the ‘New’ Economic History of Africa

    By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
    • January 2023
    • African Affairs

    Inequality Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa from Precolonial Times to the Present

    By: Ewout Frankema, Michiel de Haas and Marlous van Waijenburg
    • 2019
    • Faculty Research

    From Coast to Hinterland: Fiscal State Formation in British and French West Africa, c. 1880–1960

    By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
More from the Authors
  • Bridging the Gap with the ‘New’ Economic History of Africa By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
  • Inequality Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa from Precolonial Times to the Present By: Ewout Frankema, Michiel de Haas and Marlous van Waijenburg
  • From Coast to Hinterland: Fiscal State Formation in British and French West Africa, c. 1880–1960 By: Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg
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