Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States

Inspired by the new fiscal history, this book represents the first global survey of taxation in the premodern world. What emerges is a rich variety of institutions, including experiments with sophisticated instruments such as sovereign debt and fiduciary money, challenging the notion of a typical premodern stage of fiscal development. The studies also reveal patterns and correlations across widely dispersed societies that shed light on the basic factors driving the intensification, abatement, and innovation of fiscal regimes. Twenty scholars have contributed perspectives from a wide range of fields besides history, including anthropology, economics, political science and sociology. The volume's coverage extends beyond Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East to East Asia and the Americas, thereby transcending the Eurocentric approach of most scholarship on fiscal history.

Introduction; 1. Studying fiscal regimes Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel; Part I. Diversity and Commonalities in Early Extraction Regimes: 2. The Inka empire Terence N. D'Altroy; 3. The Aztec empire Michael E. Smith; 4. The Ancient Near East and Egypt Michael Jursa and Juan Carlos Morena García; Part II. Determinants of Intensification and Abatement: 5. Hellenistic empires Andrew Monson; 6. The Roman republic James Tan; 7. The early Roman monarchy Walter Scheidel; 8. The later Roman empire Gilles Bransbourg; 9. Early imperial China, from Qin/Han through Tang Mark E. Lewis; 10. Imperial China under the Song and late Qing Kent Gang Deng; Part III. Divergent Trends among Established Regimes: 11. Late Rome, Byzantium and early medieval western Europe John Haldon; 12. The Middle East in Islamic late antiquity Hugh Kennedy; 13. The Ottoman empire Metin M. Cosgel; 14. Early modern Japan Philip C. Brown; Part IV. Fragmented Political Ecologies and Institutional Innovation: 15. The Greek polis and koinon Emily Mackil; 16. Classical Athens Josiah Ober; 17. Why did public debt originate in Europe? David Stasavage; Part V. Comparative Perspectives and New Frontiers: 18. Tributary empires and the New Fiscal Sociology: some comparative reflections Peter F. Bang; 19. Interpreting the comparative history of fiscal regimes Edgar Kiser and Margaret Levi.

Andrew Monson is Associate Professor of Classics at New York University. While co-editing this volume, he has held the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at the University of Heidelberg as well as the Charles A. Ryskamp Fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of From the Ptolemies to the Romans: Political and Economic Change in Egypt (2012) and Agriculture and Taxation in Early Ptolemaic Egypt: Demotic Land Surveys and Accounts (2012).
Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Classics and History, and Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University, California. He is the author or editor of fifteen books on the ancient world, including The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy (Cambridge, 2012). His work, which has focused on ancient social and economic history, historical demography, and the history of empire, has been widely recognized for its innovative quantitative and comparative modelling, cross-cultural scope, and transdisciplinary breadth across the social sciences and life sciences.