Tax Evasion, the Faux Nobles, and State Fiscalism

The structure of French society in the seventeenth century presents features of enormous complexity in that the dividing lines between one stratum of society and another can be very difficult to identify. The division between nobility and commoners, for example, is rendered hazy by the existence of faux nobles, commoners who by one means or another had usurped noble titles and enjoyed illegally the immunity from taille and other direct taxes that nobility conferred. This paper, through an analysis of the report of the recherche de la noblesse in the generalite of Caen conducted from 1634 to 1635,1 establishes certain conclusions relating to the faux nobles themselves and to the value of the commission of inquiry to the crown. To what extent the results of the recherche were typical of the country as a whole could be determined only after a study of all available reports; since no such study exists, the conclusions suggested in this article pertain only to the generalite of Caen, although it is a fair conjecture that certain of them may be of general application. The recherche came at a time when the French government was being driven to open participation in the Thirty Years' War, and Richelieu, battling to fortify the regime, was exploiting every possible source of financial income. As the possibility of war against Spain turned into probability, the government strove ever more urgently to open the moneybags of the tax-paying public. Richelieu resorted to every con

Algorithm · Ancient history · Business · Economics · Evasion (ethics · Political science · Public economics · State (computer science · Tax Evasion · Computer Science · European Political History Analysis · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Medicine