Fiscal Capacity and Dualism in Colonial States: The French Empire 1830–1962

Abstract

What was the capacity of European colonial states? How fiscally extractive were they? What was their capacity to provide public goods and services? And did this change in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism? To answer these questions, we use archival sources to build a new dataset on colonial states of the second French colonial empire (1830–1962). French colonial states extracted a substantial amount of revenue, but they were under-administered because public expenditure entailed high wage costs. These costs remained a strong constraint in the “developmentalist” era of colonialism, despite a dramatic increase in fiscal capacity and large overseas subsidies.

Colonial companies and the cost of introducing Indian immigrants into Fiji, 1884–1916

“…In their survey of colonial fiscal capacity, Frankema and Booth (2019) also highlighted the importance of local intermediaries in collecting taxes. Cogneau et al (2021) analysed multiple French colonies and found that colonies were able to extract large amounts with large variation in the mix of tax revenue. Overall, there is a large consensus that revenue was raised at a local level but little research on fees rather than taxes.…”

Attaining Autonomy in the Empire: French Governors between 1860 and 1960

“…In this article, we build on that perspective, albeit in a context where sovereignty is embedded in the administration, considering the civil servants as central to the autonomy of the empire. That administration, in turn, constituted the core of the empire, a large share of the colonial economy depending on public investments and its consumption (Cogneau et al 2021). The colonial administration was very powerful in the colonies because part of the intellectual production came from its ranks (Sibeud 2002), and it faced no real counter-power in the absence of a true political representation in the colonies (Merle 2004).…”

Foundations of the Vanguard: the origins of leftist rebel groups

“…Except in a few circumstances (Weldemichael, 2013), White Europeans almost exclusively colonized other countries. Relative to the imperial metropole, colonized places were sources of human and resource exploitation without strong and robust state administration (Cogneau et al, 2018a(Cogneau et al, , 2018bHerbst, 2014;Mamdani, 1999;Van Waijenburg, 2018). Imperial society was characterized by hierarchies between social groups along salient, qualitative characteristics-most typically race but also ethnicity and/or religion (Mamdani, 1999).…”