The Emergence and Consolidation of the `Tax State'. I. The Sixteenth Century

The early modern period is crucial for the development of modern structures of political organization and their legitimation: this seems to be a truism after so much research emphasis on national history, and rather less on comparative research. In nearly all political units the power of the centre was enhanced, marginalizing the regions and localities. Although there were specific differences within each 'national' development, there were also a great number of similarities in the processes of historical change. Indeed, by viewing historical change as a series of processes which do not fit a tidy model of periodization we can study parallel historical phenomena which interrelated in the process of change. Such an approach facilitates comparative research, even if the separate `national' cases retain their own chronological distinctiveness. The creation of 'national' states in the later Middle Ages and early modern period clearly drew upon trends going back far into the Middle Ages and even to the history of feudal organization. There were significant disparities between the pace of change in Western Europe (principally Burgundy, France and England) as compared to central, east–central and southern Europe, where the central organization of state power developed more slowly. Whereas the pace of centralization must he seen as a long-term consequence of divergent feudal systems, the growth of fiscal power must be seen as a process of less divergent change. Indeed, we might speak of a 'first European world system' in the Sense of an interlinked system of monetary interchange which was not totally uniform but meant that states tended to experience comparable problems at about the same period in time. Though there may be different rates of development for modern financial institutions in Europe—as Webber and Wildavsky observedsimilarities outweighed the differences.' There was also a comparable economic