Overseas trade and taxation in England and Wales, c. 1680–1790

Abstract

Historians have made relatively little headway in quantifying the economic influence of central government taxation in the eighteenth century. This question has a bearing on both the claims of the fiscal military state thesis that taxation got more regressive after 1690 and histories of welfare, which have argued that the lot English labourers improved during this period. The following article shows how the state indirectly taxed English and Welsh consumers and what impact that had on prices. It pays special attention to revenues derived from overseas trade and compares them with excises on beer and malt. It also uses recent estimates of consumption to calculate the taxes paid by ‘respectable’ households and charts the advancing impositions made by the state. It finds that most revenues derived from overseas trade were paid by middling or elite households with incomes that could easily achieve respectability. Poorer households were, however, squeezed hard by inland duties on beer, coal, and other necessaries. In this respect, factoring in state taxes should cause historians to revise downwards the living standards of much of the population.