The Anxious Triumph

by Donald Sassoon

  43. Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, p. 46.

  44. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/147/147-h/147-h.htm

  45. Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969, p. 333 (Part 3, Chapter 2).

  46. Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, p. 291.

  47. Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, vol. 1, Williams and Norgate, Edinburgh 1864, pp. 444–5.

  48. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics, together with The Man versus the State, D. Appleton and Co., New York 1897, p. 314.

  49. David G. Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference: Four Essays on the Political Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, J. S. Mill, and T. H. Green, Swan Sonnenschein, London 1902 (1891), p. 3.

  50. Ibid, p. 4.

  51. Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, pp. 31, 33.

  52. Naomi Beck, ‘The Diffusion of Spencerism and its Political Interpretations in France and Italy’, in Greta Jones and Robert A. Peel (eds), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy, The Galton Institute, London 2004, p. 42.

  53. Ibid, pp. 51–2.

  54. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, pp. 47–77.

  55. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, p. 388.

  56. Douglas Howland, ‘Society Reified: Herbert Spencer and Political Theory in Early Meiji Japan’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 42, no. 1, January 2000, p. 70.

  57. Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950, University of Chicago Press 2014, pp. 82–3.

  58. Charles A. Hale, The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico, Princeton University Press 1989, pp. 237, 251.

  59. Greta Jones, ‘Spencer and his Circle’, in Jones and Peel (eds), Herbert Spencer: The Intellectual Legacy, p. 10.

  60. Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880–1914, Cambridge University Press 1979, pp. 17–20.

  61. Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1978, pp. 35–6.

  62. Collini, Liberalism and Sociology, pp. 20–21.

  63. ‘A Word for Laissez-Faire’, Pall Mall Gazette, 14 October 1883, cited in Wohl, The Eternal Slum, pp. 223–4.

  64. Sidney Webb, ‘The Moral of the Elections’, Contemporary Review, vol. 62, August 1892, p. 273.

  65. Ibid, p. 275.

  66. Ibid, pp. 280–81.

  67. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Chamberlain’s , vol. 1, ed. Charles W. Boyd, Constable, London 1914, pp. 163– 4.

  68. Nicholas W. Balabkins, Not by Theory Alone …: The Economics of Gustav von Schmoller and its Legacy to America, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1988, p. 47; see also Kenneth Barkin, ‘Adolf Wagner and German Industrial Development’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 41, no. 2, June 1969, pp. 144– 59.

  69. Gary Cross, A Quest for Time: The Reduction of Work in Britain and France, 1840–1940, University of California Press 1989, p. 126.

  70. David Blackbourn, ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie: Reappraising German History in the Nineteenth Century’, in David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History: Bourgeois Society and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press 1984, pp. 178–81.

  71. On Masaryk, Dobrogeanu-Gherea, and Huszadik Század, see Balázs Trencsényi, Maciej Janowski, Móniká Baar, Maria Falina, and Michal Kopeček, A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe, vol. 1: Negotiating Modernity in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’, Oxford University Press 2016, pp. 332, 432, 465, 437–8, 468–9.

  72. Michèle Merger, Un siècle d’histoire industrielle en Italie, 1880–1998, SEDES, Paris 1998, p. 21.

  73. Guido Baglioni, L’ideologia della borghesia industriale nell’Italia liberale, Einaudi, Turin 1974, p. 129.

  74. Antonio Gramsci, Il Risorgimento, Editori Riuniti, Rome 1971, p. 102.

  75. Baglioni, L’ideologia della borghesia industriale, pp. 150– 52.

  76. Edmond Neukomm, Voyage au pays du déficit (la Nouvelle Italie), Ernest Kolb, Paris 1890, p. 145.

  77. Giorgio Mori, ‘Blocco di potere e lotta politica in Italia’, in Storia della società italiana, vol. 14: Il blocco di potere nell’Italia unita, Teti editore, Milan 1980, pp. 251, 264.

  78. Nello Quilici, Origine sviluppo e insufficienza della borghesia italiana, ISPI, Milan 1942, p. 359.

  79. Richard A. Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 1908–1915, University of California Press 1975, pp. 6–8, 12–15, 24–5, 41, 53.

  80. Harrison, Disease and the Modern World, p. 115.

  81. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, La question de la population, F. Alcan, Paris 1913, p. 470.

  82. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 16, 61, 81.

  83. Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, p. 281.

  84. Frédéric Bastiat, Harmonies économiques, in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. VI, Guillaumin, Paris 1870 (6th ed.), p. 557.

  85. Ibid, pp. 553–5.

  86. Ibid, pp. 541, 543–5.

  87. Ibid, p. 566.

  88. Eliane Gubin, ‘Liberalisme économique et paternalisme en Belgique au XIXe siècle’, in Erik Aerts, Claude Beaud, and Jean Stengers (eds), Liberalism and Paternalism in the 19th Century (Tenth International Economic History Congress, Leuven, August 1990), Leuven University Press 1990, pp. 83–5.

  89. Gustave de Molinari, ‘De la production de la sécurité’, Journal des économistes, 15 February 1849: http://www.panarchy.org/molinari/securite.html

  90. Jean Puissant, ‘1886, la contre-réforme sociale?’, in Pierre Van der Vorst (ed.), Cent ans de droit social belge, Bruylant, Brussels 1988, p. 70.

  91. Henri Pirenne, Histoire de Belgique. Des origines à nos jours, vol. 5, La Renaissance du Livre, Brussels 1975, p. 155, original edition in seven volumes, 1900–1932.

  92. Holmes, ‘Laissez-Faire in Theory and Practice’, p. 681.

  93. John Stuart Mill, ‘Miss Martineau’s Summary of Political Economy’, Monthly Repository, vol. VIII, May 1834, pp. 318–22 (a review of The Moral of Many Fables by Harriet Martineau). The text can be found in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. IV.

  94. Keynes, ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’, p. 282.

  95. Daumard, ‘Puissance et inquiétudes de la société bourgeoise’, p. 402.

  96. William G. Roy, Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America, Princeton University Press 1997, p. 83.

  97. Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914, Macmillan, London 1976, pp. 153–4.

  98. V. L. Stepanov, ‘Nikolai Khristianovich Bunge’, Russian Studies in History, vol. 35, no. 2, Fall 1996, p. 53.

  99. François Caron, ‘Dynamismes et freinages de la croissance industrielle’, in Fernand Braudel and Ernest Labrousse (eds), Histoire économique et sociale de la France, Tome IV: L’ère industrielle et la société d’aujourd’hui (siècle 1880–1980), vol. 1, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1979, p. 244.

  100. Ibid, p. 252.

  101. H. G. Creel, ‘The Beginnings of Bureaucracy in China: The Origin of the Hsien’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, February 1964, p. 156.

  102. Andrew C. Janos, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, 1825–1945, Princeton University Press 1982, pp. 90, 93–4.

  103. OECD figures on the basis of ILO figures: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/gov_glance-2011-en/05/01/gv-21-01.html?itemId=/content/chapter/gov_glance-2011-27-en&_csp_=6514ff186e872f0ad7b772c5f31fbf2f

  104. Muller, The Mind and the Market, p. 234.

  105. Mark Hewitson, ‘German Public Opinion and the Question of Industrial Modernity: Wilhelmine Depictions of the French Economy’, European Review of History, vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 2000, p. 59.

  106. Max Weber, ‘The Nation State and Economic Policy’, in Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs (eds), Weber: Political Writings, Cambridge University Press 1994, pp. 13, 15.

  107. See Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber et la politique allemande, 1890–1920, Presses
Universitaires de France, Paris 1985, p. 63.

  108. David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge 1995, p. 38.

  109. Ibid, pp. 56, 222–3.

  110. Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, Penguin, London 1968, p. 135.

  111. Cited in Martin Robson, A History of the Royal Navy: The Seven Years War, I. B. Tauris, London 2015, p. 52.

  112. D. C. M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1968, pp. xiii– xiv.

  113. David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation, Allen Lane, London 2018, pp. 113–19.

  114. Christopher Hill, Reformation to Industrial Revolution: The Making of Modern English Society, 1530–1780, Penguin, London 1969, p. 226.

  6. Taxation

  1. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Apollo Press, London 1814, p. 226.

  2. Robert Brenner, ‘Economic Backwardness in Eastern Europe in Light of Developments in the West’, in Chirot (ed.), The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe, p. 23.

  3. Blum, ‘The Condition of the European Peasantry on the Eve of Emancipation’, pp. 398, 402.

  4. Roman Rosdolsky, ‘The Distribution of the Agrarian Product in Feudalism’, Journal of Economic History, vol. 11, no. 3, Summer 1951, pp. 263.

  5. Cited in ibid, p. 264.

  6. Carolyn C. Fenwick, (ed.) The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381, Part 1: Bedfordshire Leicestershire, Oxford University Press for the British Academy, London 1998, pp. xxiii–xxvi.

  7. Ardant, Histoire financière, p. 196.

  8. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Chapter XI, para. 142: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7370/7370-h/7370-h.htm

  9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’économie politique: http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/Rousseau_jj/discours_economie_politique/discours_eco_pol.htmlp. 28

  10. Richard Bonney, ‘France, 1494–1815’, in Richard Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815, Oxford University Press 1999, p. 164.

  11. Max Weber, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, in Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, IN 2004, p. 33.

  12. Jean-Baptiste Say, Traité d’économie politique ou simple exposition de la manière dont se forment, se distribuent et se consomment les richesses, O. Zeller, 1841 (6th ed.), Book 3, Chapter 9, pp. 507–8: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Trait%C3%A9_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9conomie_politique/Livre_3/Chapitre_9

  13. See a long-term study, limited to the department of Seine-et-Oise: Nicolas Delalande, ‘Le consentement à l’impôt en France: les contribuables, l’administration et le problème de la confiance. Une étude de cas en Seine-et-Oise (années 1860–années 1930)’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 56, no. 2, April–June 2009, pp. 135–63.

  14. Present league tables of failed states do not even consider tax collection as a key variable. See the yearly reports of the US-based Fund for Peace: http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=452&Itemid=900. In 2010 the top ten failures were: Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Central African Republic, Guinea, and Pakistan.

  15. Joseph A. Schumpeter, ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’ (1918), in Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, ed. Richard Swedberg, Princeton University Press 1991, p. 100.

  16. Jean-Marc Daniel, Histoire vivante de la pensée économique: Des crises et des hommes, Pearson, Paris 2010, p. 35.

  17. John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783, Routledge, London 1994, p. 22. See also Martin Daunton, ‘Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation, 1815–1914’, in Donald Winch and Patrick O’Brien (eds), The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 1688–1914, Oxford University Press 2002, pp. 319–20.

  18. Brewer, The Sinews of Power, p. 91.

  19. Patrick O’Brien, ‘Fiscal Exceptionalism: Great Britain and its European Rivals from Civil War to Triumph at Trafalgar and Waterloo’, in Winch and O’Brien (eds), The Political Economy of British Historical Experience, 1688–1914, p. 262, and Martin Daunton, ‘Creating Consent: Taxation, War, and Good Government in Britain, 1688–1914’, in Sven H. Steinmo (ed.), The Leap of Faith: The Fiscal Foundations of Successful Government in Europe and America, Oxford University Press 2018, p. 131.

  20. Margaret Levi, Of Rule and Revenue, University of California Press 1988, p. 97.

  21. Thomas Mortimer, The Elements of Commerce, Politics , London 1772, pp. 321, 440.

  22. Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, Cambridge University Press 1991, p. 95, my emphasis.

  23. Peter Nolan, China at the Crossroads, John Wiley, London 2013, p. 142.

  24. Levi, Of Rule and Revenue, pp. 123–4.

  25. Daunton, ‘Trusting Leviathan’, pp. 323, 334.

  26. Harriet Martineau, A History of England: The Thirty Years’ Peace, Charles Knight, London 1849–50, vol. 2, p. 538, cited in Wendy Hinde, Richard Cobden: A Victorian Outsider, Yale University Press 1987, p. 106.

  27. Norman Gash, Pillars of Government and Other Essays on State and Society, c. 1770–1880, Edward Arnold, London 1986, p. 53.

  28. Gabriel Ardant, Histoire de l’impôt, vol. 2: Du XVIIIe au XXIe siècle, Fayard, Paris 1972, p. 343.

  29. Daunton, ‘Trusting Leviathan’, pp. 335–40.

  30. Roger Middleton, Government versus the Market, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham 1996, p. 86.

  31. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 691, see also p. 676.

  32. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1904, p. 486.

  33. Cited in Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, p. 29.

  34. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, pp. 286–7.

  35. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, vol. I, p. 416 (Book XIII, Chapter 1).

  36. David J. A. Macey, Government and Peasant in Russia, 1861–1906: The Prehistory of the Stolypin Reforms, Northern Illinois University Press 1987, p. 36.

  37. Pierre Antonmattei, Léon Gambetta, héraut de la République, Éditions Michalon, Paris 1999, p. 164.

  38. Hewitson, ‘German Public Opinion and the Question of Industrial Modernity’, p. 54.

  39. Middleton, Government versus the Market, p. 94.

  40. Nicolas Delalande, Les batailles de l’impôt: Consentement et résistance de 1789 à nos jours, Seuil, Paris 2011, p. 215.

  41. Caron, ‘Dynamismes et freinages de la croissance industrielle’, in Braudel and Labrousse (eds), Histoire économique et sociale de la France, vol. 1, book IV, p. 256.

  42. Jean-Denis Bredin, Joseph Caillaux, Hachette, Paris 1980, pp. 95–6.

  43. Delalande, Les batailles de l’impôt, p. 7.

  44. Statistics of taxation come from the OECD database: www.oecd.org/ctp/taxdatabase

  45. Stephen Vlastos, ‘Opposition Movements in Early Meiji, 1868–1885’, in Marius B. Jansen (ed.), Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 5: The Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press 1989, pp. 368–9.

  46. Hirschmeier and Yui, The Development of Japanese Business 1600–1973, pp. 83–4; figure for land tax revenue in 1885–9 in Norman, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State, p. 77.

  47. Berend and Ránki, The European Periphery and Industrialization, 1780–1914, p. 71.

  48. Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World, p. 92.

  49. Janos, ‘Modernization and Decay in Historical Perspective’, p. 96.

  50. Zamagni, Dalla periferia al centro, p. 219.

  51. Şevket Pamuk, ‘The Evolution of Fiscal Institutions in the Ottoman Empire, 1500–1914’, in Bartolomé Yun-Casalilla and Patrick O’Brien (eds), The Rise of Fiscal States: A Global History, 1500–1914, Cambridge University Press 2012, pp. 329–30.

  52. Robert H. Gorlin, ‘Problems of Tax Reform in Imperial Russia’, Journal of Modern History, vol. 49, no. 2, June 1977, p. 249,
and Peter Gatrell, ‘The Russian Fiscal State, 1600–1914’, in Yun-Casalilla and O’Brien (eds), The Rise of Fiscal States, p. 203. Both authors present quite different figures but agree on the substance.

  53. Sergei Witte, The Memoirs of Count Witte, Heinemann, London 1921, p. 55; see also Peter I. Lyashchenko, History of the National Economy of Russia to the 1917 Revolution, Macmillan, New York, NY 1949, p. 556.

  54. Witte, Memoirs, p. 55.

  55. Paul Gregory, ‘Economic Growth and Structural Change in Tsarist Russia: A Case of Modern Economic Growth?’, Soviet Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, January 1972, p. 421.

  56. In 2005, 37 per cent of Russian men would die before the age of fifty-five, the comparable figure for the UK being only 7 per cent; see David Zaridze et al., ‘Alcohol and Mortality in Russia: Prospective Observational Study of 151,000 Adults’, Lancet, vol. 383, no. 9927, 26 April 2014, pp. 1,465–73.

  57. Gorlin, ‘Problems of Tax Reform in Imperial Russia’, pp. 251, 261.

  58. Wong, China Transformed, pp. 238–44ff.

  59. Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire, 1870–1911’, in Fairbank and Liu (eds), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 11, p. 63.

  60. Pomeranz, The Making of a Hinterland, p. 271.

  61. Crossley, The Wobbling Pivot, p. 117.

  62. Spence, The Search for Modern China, p. 231.

  63. Richard A. Musgrave, ‘Reconsidering the Fiscal Role of Government’, American Economic Review, vol. 87, no. 2, May 1997, p. 156.

  64. See the OECD database: https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=REV

  7. Laggards and Path breakers

  1. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire, p. 13.

  2. Maddison, Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development, pp. 30–40.

  3. Peter Mathias, ‘La révolution industrielle en Angleterre: un cas unique?’, Annales, vol. 27, no. 1, January–February 1972, pp. 37–8.

  4. David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, Cambridge University Press 2003, p. 219.

  5. Charles Masterman, The Condition of England, Methuen, London 1912 (1st ed. 1909), p. 56.