| Contents |
The strategic management of war and the financial chain of command. Geostrategy, international politics, and the burden of war, 1688-1714 ; The King, his ministers, and the direction of financial policy -- Raising money, finding money, making money: sourcing revenue in an age of crisis. Taxing to the hilt?: structural weakness and falling revenue ; Borrowing to the limit ; Manipulating the coinage ; Paper money and absolute monarchy -- The degeneration of military funding and the rising costs of war. The treasury of extraordinaire des guerres in the era of the Spanish succession ; The crisis of spending and appropriations in Louis XIV's personal rule ; The overdraft of war: short-term debt and military finance ; Rent-seeking in the military paymaster world. |
| Summary |
The financial humbling of a great power in any age demands explanation. In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) Louis XIV's France had to fight way beyond its borders and the costs of war rose to unprecedented heights. With royal income falling as economic activity slowed down, the widening gap between revenue and expenditure led the government into a series of desperate expedients. Ever-larger quantities of credit, often obtained through fairly novel and poorly-understood financial instruments, were combined with ill-advised monetary manipulations. Moreover, through poor ministerial management the system of earmarking revenues for spending descended into chaos. All this forced up the cost of loans, foreign exchange, and military logistics as government contractors and bankers built the mounting risks into the price of their contracts and sought to profit from the situation. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (p. [240]-245) and index. |
| Access restriction | Available only to authorized users. |
| Technical details | Mode of access: World Wide Web |
| Genre/form | Electronic books. |
| LCCN | 2012464489 |
| ISBN | 9780199585076 |
| ISBN | 0199585075 |
