In 1749-51, Jean-Baptiste de Machault d`Arnouville, then auditor of finances, tried to manage the debts of the War of the Austrian Succession, which had just ended, by proposing a partial reform of the tax system, with particular concern to limit the financial immunity of the Church. In 1764 and 1765, another comptroller general, François de L`Averdy, attempted a reform of municipal representation and administration. All royal officials understood the need to reform and rationalize both tax collection and collection; Many nobles were exempt from taxes, especially in northern France, and many taxes were collected inefficiently by private farmers. Le Petit Journal, late 19th century, which of course makes it post-revolutionary. National Customs Museum. The first steps that a Minister of Finance must take in the career he or she must undertake would be influenced by the obligation to highlight the entire administration. Darkness and darkness promote inertia; The public disclosure of our behavior, on the other hand, can only become an honor and a reward for us, to the extent that we have felt and resolutely fulfilled the importance of our duties. Such an accountability report could also enable any person participating in Your Majesty`s advice to study and monitor the state of finances; A type of knowledge that is important in itself and is either related or relates to all considerations of the moment. Jacques Necker, Ministre des finances, France, Procèsrendu, 1781 The tax system under the Ancien Régime largely excluded nobles and clergy from taxation, while citizens, especially the peasantry, paid disproportionate direct taxes. Fifth, demographic and social changes have also created their own problems.
Population growth and the widespread system of divisible inheritance, in which land was divided among threads, created pressure on agricultural land. Some peasants were able to acquire large tracts of land and enjoy considerable prosperity, but a much larger proportion led a more precarious existence. About half of the peasantry was landless or cultivated only a small plot of land. A poor harvest could have devastating consequences for these communities. These demands for tax reform (as well as participation and accountability) were motivated by the injustice of the existing system, which manifested itself in the fact that many members of the nobility and others who could pay for the privilege were exempt from taxation. At the same time, punitive salt taxes and other taxes have fallen heavily on ordinary people. 1 A system based on privilege was seen as unfair. Based on this, it is reasonable to believe that French taxes were significantly increased in the 1700s – but this was not the case. Taxes have increased in some regions (notably Paris) and decreased in others.
The overall level of taxes rose in the half-century before the revolution, but this increase was not large enough to trigger a revolution alone. In the pre-revolutionary France, there were two categories of taxes: direct taxes and indirect taxes. Direct taxes were levied on individuals and collected by royal officials. Indirect taxes took the form of customs duties and excise duties on goods and were collected by “tax farmers”. Just as taxation is therefore not dry and technical, but alive with the fundamental issues of the time, it is this particular history that has been reinvented over the years in many tax protests in France – most recently by the yellow vests. The spirit of fiscal resistance that animated the yellow vests in 2018 was partly due to the injustice of the modern tax system. The tax system of the pre-revolutionary France largely exempted nobles and clergy from taxes. The tax burden was thus transferred to farmers, employees and the professional and commercial classes, also known as the Third Estate.
In addition, people from less privileged backgrounds were prevented from acquiring even small positions of power in the regime, which caused more resentment. The debate on domestic reforms was conducted in the pages of magazines, books, pamphlets and magazines that sprouted like mushrooms in the eighteenth century. Rising literacy rates have resulted in a wider audience for the written word. Some historians, such as Rolf Engelsing, have argued that eighteenth-century Europe was also experienced as a “reading revolution”. Educated people began to continue reading instead of reading and re-reading a small number of works such as the Bible. This argument was contested. The Bible and other religious works remained very popular. However, the number of books published in Europe increased exponentially in the eighteenth century. The Crown enforced a system of censorship and controversial works such as Voltaire`s Philosophical Letters and Philosophical Dictionary were burned.
However, banned works were smuggled across the border from the Austrian Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, regimes with more liberal attitudes towards publishing. This criticism has led historians to move further and further away from social and economic causes as explanations for the revolution. Instead, they focused on the role played by political and cultural causes in fomenting the revolution. The emergence of a revolutionary political culture has been identified. This culture was expressed in the growing number of magazines, newspapers, pamphlets and books and found a forum in the spread of cafes, salons, societies and clubs. It was this culture, according to these revisionist interpretations, that triggered the events of 1789. The country`s revenue was based on a very complex tax system. It turned out that this unequal tax system served as the main fuel for the French Revolution of 1789. Secondly, many attempts were made in the eighteenth century to reform the tax system and the economy, but all failed due to resistance from the nobility and parliaments. Resistance was fostered by the widespread system of venality, in which wealthy individuals could acquire certain public offices, such as seats in parliaments. In the seventeenth century, this practice provided the crown with short-term cash flows, but it also meant that it was difficult to remove officials without compensation.
In particular, parliaments, the courts responsible for registering royal decrees so that they can become law, have become centres of resistance of royal authority and attempts to reform the tax system. These were increasingly widespread beliefs, which eventually found expression in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”, the founding cry of the heart of the revolution, which had this to say about taxation, transparency and fiscal responsibility: This is an indication of the central importance of taxes and spending at the time. Necker understood that French citizens of the 18th century were increasingly concerned about the fair management of taxes and were ready to mobilize around the issue. The overwhelming importance of fair taxation in all social strata becomes evident when we consider the best-known formal protests (remonstrances) of the period leading up to the revolution, as well as the Cahiers de doléances of 1789 (the “complaining books” compiled by various groups across the country in the year the revolution began). On October 5, women in the market gathered in front of the town hall to demand measures against the price of bread.