IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/psitcp/978-3-319-98050-8_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Why Did Chambres de Justice Disappear in Eighteenth-Century France? Fiscal Profit and Institutional Change, 1688–1788

In: The War Within

Author

Listed:
  • Joël Félix

    (University of Reading)

Abstract

This chapter examines the vexing question of the causes for the waning, in eighteenth century France, of Chambres de Justice, or extraordinary courts periodically set up by the French kings to try their financiers. To this effect, we analyse the relationship between government and tax-farmers, and calculate the profits made by these financiers during the years 1688–1780. Results do not reveal any obvious link between return on capital invested by financiers to run their business on behalf of the king and the setting up of Chambres de Justice. Yet, analysis also indicate that government adjusted its relationship with financiers across time, as a result of fiscal strains, external pressure from competitors, and public criticism of excessive profits and the fiscal system, alternating periods of private and direct administration. We conclude that Chambres de Justice, or the threat to establish one, were essentially a political instrument.

Suggested Citation

  • Joël Félix, 2018. "Why Did Chambres de Justice Disappear in Eighteenth-Century France? Fiscal Profit and Institutional Change, 1688–1788," Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance, in: Joël Félix & Anne Dubet (ed.), The War Within, chapter 0, pages 195-227, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-98050-8_9
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-98050-8_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-98050-8_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.