Collecteurs et fermiers des impôts dans les communautés du Royaume de Naples durant la période espagnole

Abstract

In the Modern Age, the figures of tax collectors and farmers in the communities of the Kingdom of Naples provoked considerable strains between the will of the central power to impose an abstract model for management of local finances and the need to arrive at a compromise with the urban elites. Provided that, for the short term, there was guaranteed access to sources of credit, and hence regular payments into the treasury, the central power declined to exercise any real control over municipal organs, accepted the fact that the latter had become the mouthpiece of a single dominant group and courted the risk that, for the medium or long term, communities should be stifled by debts. In this sense, the ambiguity of the nature of the attributions of the tax collector, as the representative of an elective municipal organ, or as occupant of a farmed position, embodies certain of the most consequential contradictions in the process of formation of the modern State.

Keywords

• Collecteurs
• Dette publique
• Époque moderne
• Impôts
• Monarchie hispanique
• Royaume de Naples