Excise Taxation and the Origins of Public Debt

D'Maris Coffman is the Mary Bateson Research Fellow at Newnham College, Cambridge, UK, Director of the Centre for Financial History, and Affiliated Lecturer, History Faculty. She works on the relationship between public finance and private capital markets in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. With Dr Anne Murphy of the University of Hertfordshire, Dr Coffman co-manages the European State Finance Database and with Dr Louise Pryor the Corn Returns Online. She sits on the Council of the Economic History Society. Dr Coffman received her MA and PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania and her BSc in Economics from the Wharton School.

“This book is full of original insights and new ways of thinking about the excise tax, and the arguments, both major and subordinate, are copiously supported by citations of primary and secondary sources and also by 20 figures and tables. It is essential reading on the tax in the context of state development and fiscal engineering.” (Stephen K. Roberts, Parliamentary History, October, 2016)

• 1. Excise Taxation in Context 2. The Introduction of the Excises 3. The Excises under the Long Parliament, 1647-1648 4. The Commonwealth Excise, 1649-1653 5. The Case of the Soap Boilers 6. The Protectorate Excise, 1654-1659 7. The Restoration Excise, 1660-1663 8. The Political Economy of Taxation 9. Looking Forward