Despite England’s growing international trading wealth, an expanding secondary sector, and more productive agriculture the mid-seventeenth century state with its outdated tax system was politically and militarily weak. Civil war and its aftermath created the urgent and protracted supply need which instigated the creation and honing of radically new effective tax forms and processes which proved indispensable during the Restoration and beyond. Drawing on Kent, London and Bristol case studies this thesis explores how the land tax became a mainstay of an increasingly powerful early modern English state by considering its administration, processes and tax mechanics from its 1643 inception to the excise crisis. Economic development offered fiscal opportunity and whilst the excise exploited product supply chains, the land tax targeted rent and income generated from agricultural, commercial and domestic real estate. Occupiers and landlords shared immediate fiscal burdens. Land taxes exploited cashflows around financial and seasonal production cycles, particularly in the more commercialised South and East, where fresh attempts were made to value and tax land. Effective local governors had for decades bolstered their own authority by delivering national initiatives and now worked in partnership with legislators to nurture the new tax and create resilience. The state’s bargain was that parliament would determine deadlines and fixed tax amounts from each locale, but local governors had immediate process ownership to determine its detailed application. Continued fiscal success required fresh waves of innovation, adaption and involvement including: empowerment, delegation, the deployment of more experienced officials, simplification, and improved stakeholder oversight. As post-Revolutionary conflict drove fiscal burdens higher, land taxes became a permanent fiscal implement of the state, despite regular outbreaks of political angst at the tax’s power. The resulting coordinated collective commitment of tens of thousands of officials, across county, city and country, was the great fiscal achievement of the age; a picture long obscured by institutionalised state narratives.

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This study examines German illustrated broadsheets that were manufactured and published in the Holy Roman Empire between 1630-1633. They were part of a pro-Swedish media campaign launched soon after the arrival of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf and the Swedish army in the Holy Roman Empire in June 1630 with the intention to legitimate the Swedish king’s presence in the Holy Roman Empire.  Inspired by Jan Glete’s notion about the early fiscal-military states as protection-selling enterprises, this study uses pro-Swedish illustrated broadsheets as a source material in order to examine how they were used to encourage German Protestants to buy Swedish protection. By looking for protection-selling arguments, this study wants to find out how Swedish protection was portrayed in the illustrated broadsheets. This study also makes a distinction between confessional and non-confessional protection-selling arguments, making it possible to distinguish which aspects of the protection-selling arguments that had a more religious character and vice versa. After the analysis of the source material, the protection-selling arguments are organised into various categories of representation, which enables the study to establish how Sweden and Gustav II Adolf were portrayed, and what they were claimed to represent in terms of protection.  The study concludes that the illustrated broadsheets portrayed Sweden and Gustav II Adolf as competent seller of protection who had the ability to protect its allies and co-religionists against aggression, religious oppression, plundering, murdering, destruction, the Devil and his collaborators, and consequences of the Edict of Restitution. Gustav II Adolf represents the Swedish state, and the illustrated broadsheets highlight his courage, competence as a political and military leader, and his Protestant devotion.  Their enemies are portrayed as dissident aggressors who represented religious oppression, plundering, murdering, destruction, heresy, devil-worshiping, and witchcraft. They were said to possess the negative qualities of hypocrisy and mortal sin, as well as an incapable military leadership.

No description available.

No description available.