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Reviewed by:
  • Taxation in Colonial America
  • William J. Ashworth
Alvin Rabushka. Taxation in Colonial America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. xx + 946 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-13345-4, $60 (hardback).

At nearly one thousand pages, this is not a book for the faint hearted. The volume is relentless in its detail with a torrent of revenue figures flowing through its pages—including the types of taxes and what they raised, who paid what, where, who were exempt, and how taxes were evaded. In short, Taxation in Colonial America is an encyclopedic overview of the taxes introduced within the thirteen colonies from the establishment of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American War of Independence.

This is a very welcome book upon a crucial but, typically, neglected subject. The role of Alvin Rabushka work is to first, offer a detailed temporal and spatial classification of the types of taxes that characterized each of the colonies. And second, to illuminate the key forms of money used in each region—from Indian shells, European coin, the odd locally minted coin (for example briefly in Massachusetts), goods such as Tobacco (Virginia and Maryland) and, lastly, paper currency helping the colonies to avoid tax increases—with Massachusetts being the “first Western government to issue paper currency” (p. 274). The end result is at times a grinding read but certainly a fascinating exploration in the history of taxation and money.

The book is organized chronologically and naturally split into three colonial regions, namely, the New England colonies, the middle colonies, and the southern plantation colonies. What is striking about Rabushka’s geographical map of taxes is the diversity of each colony. The outcome is a varied chart of indirect taxes such as excises (especially on alcohol) and customs (including, in certain places, upon slaves) to direct taxes like those based on polls and property. During the first wave of European expansion, the first colonies were characterized less by taxation and more by tax inducements to encourage white emigration to these regions. Tax exemptions continued to characterize the next wave to places like Maryland, New Sweden (Delaware), Carolina, and New Jersey. Where Rabushka feels certain central themes need detailed exploration, he introduces boxes on the subject in smaller font. Topics include the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, the nature of colonial land tenure, precious metals and coinage, and public accounts in Delaware.

The higher tax paying colonies tended to be at the boundaries of conflict with, primarily, Britain’s European rivals. Other colonies paid very low taxes such as Pennsylvania or even next to nothing [End Page 875] like the tax havens of Delaware and New Jersey. The predominantly low taxation of the colonies was not through a haphazard imperial policy but, on the contrary, a way of inducing trade—as a source of staple products and raw materials and as a market for British manufactures. By keeping the burden of taxation low, it also secured British power against its European rivals. Thus “salutary” or “benign” neglect was a deliberate strategy (1714–1739), until the burden of the British National Debt provoked the government to look at the possibility of squeezing revenues from the colonies. We also get some useful detail on the way the initial basis of the colonies—from joint-stock companies and merchant proprietors to religious groups and royal charters—helped inform the incidence and nature of taxation.

Each part of the book is prefaced by an essay on the events across the Atlantic in England/Britain. This provides some much needed context in trying to understand the founding and subsequent development of the colonies—in particular their role in Britain’s mercantile policy, debates over the legal extent of British power, and how to enforce its rule. However, this is not the primary purpose of the book nor, in a single volume, should it be expected. Instead this extensive overview of taxation provides the basis for further studies on the relationship between duties and economic development, and the way this heritage persisted after independence from Britain.

The book also invites further research on the question of how differences in colonial taxation impacted upon domestic consumption, the nature...

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