Julia McClure - Böcker

Empire of Poverty examines how changing concepts of poverty in the long-sixteenth century helped shape the deep structures of states and empires and the contours of imperial inequalities. While poverty is often understood to have become a political subject with the birth of political economy in the eighteenth century, this book points to the longer history of poverty as a political subject and a more complicated relationship between moral and political economies. It focuses upon the critical transformations taking place in the long-sixteenth century, with the emergence of the world´s first global empire and the development of colonial capitalism. The book explores how the 'moral-political economy of poverty' - defined as a new and changing conceptualisation of and approach to poverty, across laws, institutions, and acts of resistance - played a critical role in the development and governance of the Spanish Empire. In so doing it offers insights into the negotiated nature of sovereignty, the construction of inequalities, and strategies of resistance. Empire of Poverty explains how the combined processes of the transition to global capitalism and imperialism in the long-sixteenth century wrought a moral crisis which led to the transformation of poverty and reconceptualization of the poor and how the newly emerging beliefs, laws, and institutions of poverty helped structure the inequalities of the new global order.

The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.

The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450–1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.

Imperial Inequalities takes Western European empires and their legacies as the explicit starting point for discussion of issues of taxation and welfare. In doing so, it addresses the institutional and fiscal processes involved in modes of extraction, taxation, and the hierarchies of welfare distribution across Europe’s global empires. The idea of ‘imperial inequalities’ provides a conceptual frame for thinking about the long-standing colonial histories that are responsible, at least in part, for the shape of present inequalities.This wide-ranging volume challenges existing historiographical accounts that present states and empires as separate categories. Instead, it views them as co-constitutive units by focusing upon the politics of economic governance across imperial spaces. Authors examine the fiscal innovations that enabled European empires to finance their expansion, the politics of redistribution that were important to constructing the veneer of legitimacy of taxation, and the fiscal mechanisms that were established to ensure that the imperial contours of inequality continued to define the postcolonial world. These diverse contributions provide new resources for how we think about issues of taxation and welfare across the longue durée.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced inequalities

Imperial Inequalities takes Western European empires and their legacies as the explicit starting point for discussion of issues of taxation and welfare. In doing so, it addresses the institutional and fiscal processes involved in modes of extraction, taxation, and the hierarchies of welfare distribution across Europe’s global empires. The idea of ‘imperial inequalities’ provides a conceptual frame for thinking about the long-standing colonial histories that are responsible, at least in part, for the shape of present inequalities.This wide-ranging volume challenges existing historiographical accounts that present states and empires as separate categories. Instead, it views them as co-constitutive units by focusing upon the politics of economic governance across imperial spaces. Authors examine the fiscal innovations that enabled European empires to finance their expansion, the politics of redistribution that were important to constructing the veneer of legitimacy of taxation, and the fiscal mechanisms that were established to ensure that the imperial contours of inequality continued to define the postcolonial world. These diverse contributions provide new resources for how we think about issues of taxation and welfare across the longue durée.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10, Reduced inequalities

This book examines the story of the ‘discovery of America’ through the prism of the history of the Franciscans, a socio-religious movement with a unique doctrine of voluntary poverty.