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Through the lens of fiscal capacity building, a team of leading historians provides a comparative overview of how colonial states set up their administrative systems in operations that involved local people and elites. This sheds light on the political economic context of colonial state formation, and the long-term effects of colonial rule.
List of contents
1. Fiscal capacity and the Colonial State. Lessons from a comparative perspective Ewout Frankema and Anne Booth; 2. Towards a modern fiscal state in Southeast Asia, c. 1900-60 Anne Booth; 3. Why was British India a limited state? Tirthankar Roy; 4. Indigenous and colonial institutions in the fiscal development of French Indochina Montserrat López Jerez; 5. Fiscal development in Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria: was Japanese colonialism different? Anne Booth and Kent Deng; 6. From coast to hinterland. Fiscal capacity building in British and French West Africa, c. 1880-1960 Ewout Frankema and Marlous van Waijenburg; 7. New colonies, old tools. Building fiscal systems in East and Central Africa Leigh Gardner; 8. Local conditions and metropolitan visions: fiscal policies and practices in Portuguese Africa, c.1850-1970 Kleoniki Alexopoulou; 9. How mineral discoveries shaped the fiscal system of South Africa Abel Gwaindepi and Krige Siebrits.
About the author
Ewout Frankema is Professor and Chair of Rural and Environmental History at Wageningen Universiteit, The Netherlands. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Global History and research fellow of the UK Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).Anne Booth is Professor Emerita at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has researched on the economies of Southeast Asia in both the colonial and post-colonial eras, and has written and edited a number of books on the region as well as articles in journals.
Summary
Through the lens of fiscal capacity building, a team of leading historians provides a comparative overview of how colonial states set up their administrative systems in operations that involved local people and elites. This sheds light on the political economic context of colonial state formation, and the long-term effects of colonial rule.
Foreword
How colonial governments in Asia and Africa financed their activities and why fiscal systems varied across colonies reveals the nature and long-term effects of colonial rule.
