Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T02:28:19.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Taxation, State Formation, and Governmentality: The Historical Development of Alcohol Excise Duties in England and Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2018

Abstract

The use of excise taxation in contemporary Western societies is marked by the curious coexistence of the state's fiscal objective of raising revenue with often-articulated behavioral objectives relating to lowering or altering public consumption of certain commodities. This article uses findings from the first dedicated empirical study of the long-term development of various alcohol excise duties in England and Wales to explain how and why this contemporary situation, of distinct and potentially inconsistent rationalities, came to exist. Orthodox tax history tends to emphasize the importance of tax for state formation generally and/or the more specific establishment of a fiscal-military state in Britain. While important, such accounts relate principally to the fiscal dimensions of taxation and say little about any behavioral aspects. This article draws upon the original analysis of archival government sources dating from 1643 to 1914 that pertain to the excise taxation of various drinks that are today defined as alcoholic. It also involves the innovative application of the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to this history of taxation. The article demonstrates that the historical development of alcohol excise duties in England and Wales has been driven not just by the formation of a fiscal-military state, but also by the emergence of governmentality across the modern period. This original insight into tax history is used to explain the logical inconsistencies within current tax laws. Moreover, by providing the first sustained analysis of its links to taxation, the article advances the developing literature around governmentality within criminology, sociology, and sociolegal studies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

Firth, Charles H., and Rait, Robert S., eds. (1911) Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660. Vols. 1 and 2. London: HM Stationery Office.Google Scholar
House of Commons (1830a) Sale of Beer 4 March, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/04/sale-of-beer#S2V0022P0_18300304_HOC_85 (accessed July 1, 2016).Google Scholar
TNA CUST 44 Series. Board of Customs and Excise or Predecessor: Annual Reports, The National Archive, UK.Google Scholar
TNA CUST 118 Series. Board of Customs and Excise or Predecessor: Private Office Papers, The National Archive, UK.Google Scholar
TNA CUST 119 Series. Board of Excise and Successor: Miscellaneous Bundles, The National Archive, UK.Google Scholar
TNA CUST 145 Series. Board of Customs and Excise or Predecessor: Excise Duties. Receipts, Payments and Rates, The National Archive, UK.Google Scholar
TNA CUST 155. HM Customs and Excise. Collection of Memoranda, Reports and Examples on the History of Various Duties and Taxes, The National Archive, UK.Google Scholar

References

Anderson, Stuart (2002) “Discretion and the rule of law: The licensing of drink in England, c. 1817–40.” Journal of Legal History 23 (1): 4559.Google Scholar
Andreyeva, Tatiana, Long, Michael W., and Brownell, Kelly D. (2010) “The impact of food prices on consumption: A systematic review of research on the price elasticity of demand for food.” American Journal of Public Health 100 (2): 216–22.Google Scholar
Ashworth, William J. (2003) Customs and Excise: Trade, Production and Consumption in England, 1640–1845. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Babor, Thomas, Caetano, Raul, Cresswell, Sally, Edwards, Griffith, Giesbrecht, Norman, Graham, Kathryn, et al. (2010) Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Beckingham, David (2013) “Scale and the moral geographies of Victorian and Edwardian child protection.” Journal of Historical Geography 42: 140–51.Google Scholar
Bonney, Peter (1995a) “Revenues,” in Bonney, Peter (ed.) Economic Systems and State Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 423506.Google Scholar
Bonney, Peter (1995b) “The eighteenth century. II. The struggle for great power status and the end of the old fiscal regime,” in Bonney, Peter (ed.) Economic Systems and State Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 300–16.Google Scholar
Braddick, Michael (1991) “Popular politics and public policy: The excise riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and its aftermath.” The Historical Journal 34 (3) 597626.Google Scholar
Brewer, John (1988) The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688–1783. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burnett, John (1999) Liquid Pleasures. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Churchill, David (2016) “Historical Criminology and Analytical Histories of Crime Control.” Presented at the British Crime Historians Symposium: University of Edinburgh, 8 October.Google Scholar
Clark, Peter (1983) The English Alehouse: A Social History, 1200–1830. Harlow, UK: Longman.Google Scholar
Cnossen, Sijbren (2011) “The economics of excise taxation,” in Albi, Emilio and Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge (eds.) The Elgar Guide to Tax Systems. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar: 278–99.Google Scholar
Coffman, D'Maris (2013) Excise Taxation and the Origins of Public Debt. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Cook, Christopher H. (2006) Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Critcher, Charles (2011) “Drunken antics: The gin craze, binge drinking and the political economy of moral regulation,” in Hier, Sean (ed.) Moral Panic and the Politics of Anxiety. London: Routledge: 171–89.Google Scholar
Daunton, Martin (2001) Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation, 1799–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dean, Mitchell (1999) Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Deconinck, Koen, Poelmans, Eline, and Swinnen, Johan (2015) “How beer created Belgium (and the Netherlands): The contribution of beers taxes to the war finance during the Dutch Revolt.” Business History 58 (5): 694724.Google Scholar
Dillon, Patrick (2003) Gin: The Much Lamented Death of Madame Geneva. Boston: Justin Charles and Co.Google Scholar
Dodsworth, Francis (2015) “Epochalism and the society of security: Continuity and change in self-defence culture,” in Lytje, Maren, Nielsen, Torben, and Jorgenson, Martin (eds.) Challenging Ideas? Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 88107.Google Scholar
Edman, Johan (2015) “Temperance and modernity: Alcohol consumption as a collective problem, 1885–1913.” Journal of Social History 49 (1): 2052.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1991a) “Governmentality,” in Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter (eds.) The Foucault Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 87103.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1991b) Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (2009) Security, Territory and Population. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Garland, David (2014) “What is a ‘history of the present’? On Foucault's genealogies and their critical preconditions.” Punishment and Society 16 (4): 365–84.Google Scholar
Gifford, Adam (1997) “Whisky, margarine, and newspapers: A tale of three taxes,” in Shughart, William F. (ed.) Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination. London: Transaction: 5777.Google Scholar
Greenaway, John (2003) Drink and British Politics since 1830. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1991) “How should we do the history of statistics?,” in Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter (eds.) The Foucault Effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 181–96.Google Scholar
Hailwood, Mark (2016) “Historical perspectives,” in Kolind, Torsten, Thom, Betsy, and Hunt, Geoffrey (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Drug and Alcohol Studies: Social Science Approaches. London: Sage: 929.Google Scholar
Hames, Gina (2012) Alcohol in World History. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Harrison, Brian (1971) Drink and the Victorians. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Higgs, Edward (2001) “The rise of the information state: The development of central state surveillance of the citizen in England, 1500–2000.” Journal of Historical Sociology 14 (2): 175–97.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas (1998 [1651]) Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan (1996) Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hunter, Judith (2002) “English inns, taverns, alehouses and brandy shops: The legislative framework, 1495–1797,” in Kümin, Beat and Tlusty, T. Ann (eds.) The World of the Tavern. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate: 6582.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Steven (2014) “Intelligence, reason of state and the art of governing risk and opportunity in early modern Europe.” Economy and Society 43 (3): 370400.Google Scholar
Jennings, Paul (2007) The Local: A History of the English Pub. Stroud, UK: History Press.Google Scholar
Jessop, Bob (2007) “From micro-powers to governmentality: Foucault's work on statehood, state formation, statecraft and state power.” Political Geography 26 (1): 3440.Google Scholar
Kneale, James (2012) “Surveying pubs, cities and unfit lives: Governmentality, drink and space in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain.” Journal for the Study of British Cultures 19 (1): 4560.Google Scholar
Körner, Martin (1995) “Public Credit,” in Bonney, Peter (ed.) Economic Systems and State Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 507–38.Google Scholar
Knepper, Paul (2016) Writing the History of Crime. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Lemke, Thomas (2007) “An indigestible meal? Foucault, governmentality and state theory.” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 8 (2): 4364.Google Scholar
Lorenzi, Peter (2004) “Sin taxes.” Society 41 (3): 5965.Google Scholar
Manton, Elizabeth (2014) “The diverse drivers of relative changes in excise taxes on beer and spirits in Australia, 1902–2012.” Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 21 (3): 197204.Google Scholar
McMullan, John L. (1998) “Social surveillance and the rise of the ‘police machine.’Theoretical Criminology 2 (1): 93117.Google Scholar
Meier, Petra, Booth, Andrew, Stockwell, Tim, Sutton, Anthea, Wilkinson, Anna, Wong, Ruth, et al. (2008) Independent Review of the Effects of Alcohol Pricing and Promotion. Sheffield, UK: University of Sheffield.Google Scholar
Miller, Ian (2013) “‘A dangerous, revolutionary force amongst us’: Conceptualising working-class tea-drinking in the British Isles, c.1860–1900.” Cultural and Social History 10 (3): 419–38.Google Scholar
Miller, Peter (1990) “On the interrelations between accounting and the state.” Accounting, Organizations and Society 15 (4): 315–38.Google Scholar
Nicholls, James (2009) The Politics of Alcohol. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Nye, John V. C. (2011) “Brewing nation: War, taxes and the growth of the British beer industry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,” in Swinnen, Johan F. M. (ed.) The Economics of Beer. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 6278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Patrick, and Hunt, Philip (1993) “The rise of a fiscal state in England, 1485–1815.” Historical Research 66 (160): 129–76.Google Scholar
Ogus, Anthony (1999) “Nudging and rectifying: The use of fiscal instruments for regulatory purposes.” Legal Studies 19 (2): 245–66.Google Scholar
O'Malley, Pat (2004) Risk, Uncertainty and Government. London: Glasshouse.Google Scholar
O'Malley, Pat, and Valverde, Mariana (2004) “Pleasure, freedom and drugs: The uses of pleasure in liberal governance of drug and alcohol consumption.” Sociology 38 (1): 2542.Google Scholar
Ormrod, W. Mark (1999) “England in the Middle Ages,” in Bonney, Peter (ed.) The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe c. 1200–1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1952.Google Scholar
Osterberg, Esa (2011) “Alcohol tax changes and the use of alcohol in Europe.” Drug and Alcohol Review 30 (2): 124–29.Google Scholar
Plack, Noelle (2012) “Liberty, equality and taxation: Wine in the French Revolution.” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs 26 (1): 522.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas (2001) “The politics of life itself.” Theory, Culture and Society 18 (6): 130.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter (1992) “Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government.” British Journal of Sociology 43 (2): 173205.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, O'Malley, Pat, and Valverde, Mariana (2006) “Governmentality.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2: 83104.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph (1991 [1918]) “The crisis of the tax state,” in Swedberg, Richard (ed.) Joseph A. Schumpeter: The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 19140.Google Scholar
Seddon, Toby (2016) “Inventing drugs: A genealogy of a regulatory concept.” Journal of Law and Society 43 (3): 393415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shughart, William F. (1997) “Introduction and overview,” in Shughart, William F. (ed.) Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination. London: Transaction: 112.Google Scholar
Sournia, Jean-Charles (1990), A History of Alcoholism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Spierenburg, Pieter (2004) “Punishment, power and history: Foucault and Elias.” Social Science History 28 (4): 607–36.Google Scholar
Stenson, Kevin (2006) “Beyond histories of the present.” Economy and Society 27 (4): 333–52.Google Scholar
Sulkunen, Pekka, and Warpenius, Katarina (2000) “Reforming the self and the other: The temperance movement and the duality of modern subjectivity.” Critical Public Health 10 (4): 423–38.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1990) Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana (1998) Diseases of the Will: Alcohol and the Dilemmas of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana (2003) “Police science, British style: Pub licensing and knowledges of urban disorder.” Economy and Society 32 (2): 234–52.Google Scholar
Valverde, Mariana (2006) “Genealogies of European states: Foucauldian reflections.” Economy and Society 36 (1): 159–78.Google Scholar
Wagenaar, Alexander C., Salois, Matthew J., and Komro, Kelli A. (2009) “Effects of beverage alcohol taxes and prices on drinking: A meta-analysis of 1003 estimates from 112 studies.” Addiction 104 (2): 179–90.Google Scholar
Warner, Jessica (2004) Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason. London: Profile.Google Scholar
Warner, Jessica (2011) “Faith in numbers: Quantifying gin and sin in eighteenth century England.” Journal of British Studies 50 (1): 7699.Google Scholar
Warner, Jessica, and Ivis, Frank (1999) “‘Damn you, you informing bitch’: Vox Populi and the unmaking of the Gin Act of 1736.” Journal of Social History 33 (2): 299330.Google Scholar
Warner, Jessica, and Ivis, Frank (2000) “Gin and gender in early eighteenth century London.” Eighteenth Century Life 24 (2): 85105.Google Scholar
Warner, Jessica, Her, Minghao, Gmel, Gerhard, and Rehm, Jurgen (2001) “Can legislation prevent debauchery? Mother gin and public health in 18th century England.” American Journal of Public Health 91 (3): 375–84.Google Scholar
Wilson, George (1940) Alcohol and the Nation. London: Nicholson and Wilson.Google Scholar
Wrightson, Keith (1981) “Alehouses, order and reformation in rural England, 1590–1660,” in Eileen, Yeo and Stephen, Yeo (eds.) Popular Culture and Class Conflict, 1590–1914. Sussex, UK: Harvester: 127.Google Scholar
Yelvington, Brenda (1997) “Excise taxes in historical perspective,” in Shughart, William F. (ed.) Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination. London: Transaction: 3156.Google Scholar
Yeomans, Henry (2011) “What did the British temperance movement accomplish? Attitudes to alcohol, the law and moral regulation.” Sociology 45 (1): 3853.Google Scholar
Yeomans, Henry (2014) Alcohol and Moral Regulation. Bristol, UK: Policy Press.Google Scholar