French fundraising to pay for the Nine Years’ War

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:56 +0000

The strategies chosen by the French monarchy to try to pay for the Nine Years’ War can be studied through the figure of the French financiers and assistants. In contrast to the regularity of these financiers and assistants, with the contracts they signed to offer certain goods or services to the monarchy, there were the French traitants. These intermediaries, who, although they managed to collect a large amount of goods and capital for the monarchy, were exceptionally expensive due to their extraordinary nature, and had an appalling impact on the coffers in future accounts if their services were used too much.
The revenue collected during this conflict came from the rents obtained from the crown, the taxes levied by the French Treasury, the change in the value of coins and the so-called traités. The graph shows the great importance given by Pontchartrain, the French Finance Minister, to extraordinary financing, which accounted for almost half of the money allocated to pay for the war and 70% of the resources collected in 1691.

The post French fundraising to pay for the Nine Years’ War first appeared on History Lab.

Fabrics registered in the shops of Murcia (1691-1692)

ad_hlab_min — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:29:07 +0000

At the end of the 17th century, with the beginning of the Nine Years’ War (1689) between Spain and France, a persecution of French goods, capital and subjects began throughout Spanish territory. In this situation, the smuggling judge Antonio de Torres Prieto visited Murcia and its commercial establishments to carry out a search of the goods present in them, focusing especially on the textile manufactures, thus focusing on their volume, typology and origin.
The source is not without its problems, as the possibility of merchants hiding part of their goods or manipulating the account books is constantly present, although it does provide key information on the stock of goods present in the establishments visited by the smuggling judge, and in order to try to be as accurate as possible, it also relies on the register of goods that entered and left through the customs office in Murcia.
From the visits to the shops in Murcia during the two-year period 1691 and 1692, some forty establishments, it can be shown that 66.3% corresponded to articles made of vegetable fibres (linen, hemp and cotton), 9.6% to silk goods and 23.3% to woollen goods, in keeping with the climatic conditions of the region and the city. The question to be dealt with here is the number of pieces found, since at no point is the question of whether they were sufficient to cover the needs of the inhabitants of Murcia and its immediate surroundings, who had been accustomed for some years to French textile manufactures.

The post Fabrics registered in the shops of Murcia (1691-1692) first appeared on History Lab.

Guerra de los Nueve Años - History Lab

French fundraising to pay for the Nine Years’ War

Fabrics registered in the shops of Murcia (1691-1692)