Taxation and Public Finances in the Spanish Empire

1550-1750

Jose Ignacio Andres Ucendo, Xabier Lamikiz, Ramón Lanza García

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781041100829
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040614921
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

The emergence and consolidation of the so-called modern state was one of the most remarkable features of the early modern period and went hand in hand with the development of fiscal and financial systems.
This book explores the case of the Spanish Habsburgs who ruled over a vast collection of states and principalities in the burgeoning Spanish empire. In this edited volume, a cast of expert economic historians each explores the fiscal and financial systems created in the different territories of the Spanish Monarchy, including Castile, Aragón, Navarre, Spanish America, Portugal, the Italian States and the Southern Low Countries. While each of the components of this 'composite monarchy' laboriously created its own fiscal and financial apparatus, there are interesting similarities behind the at-first-sight impenetrable jungle of different fiscal and financial institutions which indicates more commonality than is sometimes assumed. Also, the medieval heritage of these fiscal systems did not preclude change and evolution, as the massive expansion of public credit in Portugal and Castile demonstrates. However, the chapters also provide convincing evidence to question the adequacy of the almighty fiscal state paradigm which dominates similar work on the Dutch and British empires and shows that a unified imperial fiscal and financial bureaucracy never existed. The book demonstrates that the imperial center consistently observed local privileges and rights while negotiating its mounting fiscal requests with the Empire's different cities, territories, and corporations separately.
This book will find ready readers among all those interested in European and American economic history, early modern history and the history of public finance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• About the editors
• Contributors
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction: Fiscal and financial policies in the Spanish Empire, 1550–1750: An overview
• 1 The Castilian fiscal and financial system in the 16th and 17th centuries (1561–1700)
• 2 Royal revenues and fiscal privileges in Early Modern Navarre
• 3 State, taxation and finance in Italy. Some comparative issues
• 4 Fiscal crisis and public debt in Castile at the end of the reign of Charles V
• 5 State coercion, negotiation and predation: The political economy of the Spanish Empire and the taxation of the Carrera de Indias, c. 1570–1700
• 6 Merchants of Mexico City and the Bula of Crusade in New Spain, 1590–1659
• 7 Cardinal Portocarrero, the Cathedral Chapter of Toledo and the Papacy in the negotiations of the 1707 loan to Felipe V
• 8 Changing hands: Debt management, credible commitment, and the market for public debt in Portugal (1520–1760)
• 9 “Es politica segura y obligacion precissa evitar la mayor ruina”. Municipal taxation and debt in the Spanish Crown of Aragon (1718–1760)
• 10 Economic decline and financial crisis in Flanders and Brabant during the 17th and 18th centuries seen through the eyes of contemporary memoirs
• Index