Dissecting the Sinews of Power: International Trade and the Rise of Britain’s Fiscal-Military State, 1689–1823
重新评估了海外贸易税收在英国财政军事国家发展中的作用，通过构建新的历史收入序列，发现贸易商品税收贡献巨大，挑战了传统上强调国内因素的观点。
We evaluate the role of taxes on overseas trade in the development of imperial Britain’s fiscal-military state. Influential work, for example, Brewer’s Sinews of Power , attributed increased fiscal capacity to the taxation of domestic, rather than traded, goods: excise revenues, coarsely associated with domestic goods, grew faster than customs revenues. We construct new historical revenue series disaggregating excise revenues from traded and domestic goods. We find substantial growth in revenue from traded goods, accounting for over half of indirect taxation around 1800. This challenges conventional wisdom, attributing the development of the British state to domestic factors. International factors mattered, too.