Imperial inequalities : the politics of economic governance across European empires / edited by Gurminder Bhambra and Julia McClure.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bhambra, Gurminder K., editor.

McClure, Julia, editor.

Series:

Postcolonial international studies.

Postcolonial international studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Equality--Europe--History.

Equality.

Europe--Politics and government.

Europe.

Europe--Economic policy.

Europe--Colonies--Administration--History.

Europe--Colonies--Economic policy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (332 pages) : illustrations (black and white).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2022

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

data file

Biography/History:

Gurminder K. Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex.

Julia McClure is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early Modern Global History in the School of Humanities, University of Glasgow.

Summary:

Imperial Inequalities takes Western European empires, and their legacies, as the explicit starting point for discussion. It addresses the institutional and fiscal processes involved in the modes of extraction, that is, taxation, and hierarchies of welfare distribution across Europe's global empires. It looks at the ways in which particularities of economic governance across European empires have shaped forms of inequality in the present and their ongoing implications for contemporary political economy. Specifically, it examines the ways in which European empires mobilised forms of taxation across the territories they governed and addresses how this was understood, both in the metropole and the imperial hinterlands. The volume further addresses the different forms of welfare provided within the imperial polity in terms of who contributed, who had access, and how this was differentiated across its broader reaches. The relationship between taxation and welfare can be regarded as central to the dynamics of modern nation-states, yet the role of imperialism has rarely been addressed. Nor has the relationship been discussed within the literature addressing issues of economic governance across imperial domains. The volume culminates by looking at the various taxation regimes in operation in different European empires and how their postcolonial legacies continue to shape our world. In sum, the volume provides historical insights into the shaping of structures of inequality through an examination of the complex interplay between forms of extraction and differential redistribution which continue to have repercussions in the present.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Notes on contributors

Preface: Fiscal democracy and the legacy of empire

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Imperial Inequalities

Part I: Institutional and fiscal issues

The great gage: Mortgaging Ireland to finance an empire

The cost of thrift: The politics of 'financial autonomy' in the French colonial empire, 1900-14

Madagascar and French imperial mercantilism: Foreign trade and domestic crises, 1895-1914

The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company

Internal inequalities: Taxpayers, taxation, and expenditure in Sierra Leone, c. 1890s to 1937

Part II: Taxation and welfare

Taxation, welfare, and inequalities in the Spanish imperial state

Political economies of welfare of the Spanish Empire: Tax and charity for the Hospital de los Naturales of Potosí

Poverty, health, and imperial wealth in early modern Scotland

Compromise and adaptation in colonial taxation: Political-economic governance and inequality in Indonesia

Imperial revenue and national welfare: The case of Britain

Part III: Post-colonial legacies

Making investor states: Haitian foreign debt and neocolonial economic governance in nineteenth-century France

The lure of the welfare state following decolonisation in Kenya

From capitation taxes to tax havens: British fiscal policies in a colonial island world

Imperial extraction and 'tax havens'

The Crown Agents and the CDC Group: Imperial extraction and development's 'private sector turn'

Afterword: Imperialism and global inequalities

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 27 Feb 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher-supplied metadata, and print record version; resource not viewed.

Other Format:

Print version: Bhambra, Gurminder Imperial Inequalities

ISBN:

9781526175465

1526175460

9781526166159

1526166151

9781526166135

1526166135

OCLC:

1349089875