Profit, embezzlement, restitution. The role of the traitants in the Nine Years’ War and Chamillart’s tax on financial benefits (notice n° 560387)
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| 005 - DATE AND TIME OF LATEST TRANSACTION | |
| control field | 20250121123535.0 |
| 041 ## - LANGUAGE CODE | |
| Language code of text/sound track or separate title | fre |
| 042 ## - AUTHENTICATION CODE | |
| Authentication code | dc |
| 100 10 - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME | |
| Personal name | Félix, Joël |
| Relator term | author |
| 245 00 - TITLE STATEMENT | |
| Title | Profit, embezzlement, restitution. The role of the traitants in the Nine Years’ War and Chamillart’s tax on financial benefits |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. | |
| Date of publication, distribution, etc. | 2015.<br/> |
| 500 ## - GENERAL NOTE | |
| General note | 16 |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. | |
| Summary, etc. | The aim of this article is to revisit the question of financiers in Ancien Régime France. It starts with an analysis of the discourses regarding financiers under the Absolute Monarchy, which underlines the complexity of their relationship with the government and the public. It then reviews the secondary literature and highlights the existence of competing historical interpretations (functional, political, utilitarian), which raise the question of their overall capacity to account for the role and impact of financiers at different times. On this basis, the article focuses on a specific group of financiers, the so-called traitants d’affaires extraordinaires, during the Nine Years’ War. Further to a description of the specific role and scope of the activities of the various financiers responsible for helping the monarchy to raise the funds it needed to pay for its peace and wartime expenditure, the article examines the conditions and profits granted by the king in his contracts with the traitants, whose services were hired for the purpose of selling royal offices within the public domain and thereby increasing the Treasury’s revenue. It also explores the contractual arrangements of the companies established by financiers to manage their operations, as well as the rights and the responsibilities of their various stakeholders. These bases being laid, the article relies on the administrative correspondence relating to the traités during the Nine Years’ War to address a range of issues, in particular the extent to which these contracts, and other control procedures, were robust enough to deter fraud. The accounts of two traitants’ companies offer an opportunity to analyze and compare the structure of their income and expenditure (including the volume and cost of the promissory notes sold within the public domain to finance their payments to the Treasury), to explore the strategies of the contractors, to calculate their net profits and further discuss the problem of embezzlement. The article ends with the study of the context and debates that led to the introduction by finance minister Michel Chamillart, in 1700, of a shortfall tax on the financial profits of the gens d’affaires or traitants, the method used to determine its rate (50 percent of the net benefits), its distribution among the various stakeholders (including the bailleurs de fonds or backers), and the related procedures. In sum, the article argues that the relationship between the monarchy, society and financiers under the Ancien Régime was not static and, therefore, suggests that the broad question of control and fraud must be examined against changing circumstances. With regard specifically to the Nine Years’ War, the article concludes that, within the constraints of the Absolute Monarchy, contractors offered valuable services by raising capital for the benefit of a king who ruled over a country that, at the time, was by far the wealthiest in Europe, where ministers failed to foresee long wars of attrition, and whose financial strategy was limited by the very existence of privilege. Overall, the traités were too costly to be a viable system of war financing. Under these conditions, the substantial fortunes made by a handful of very successful traitants suffice to explain why the government easily gave in to public criticism against the wealth of financiers and felt compelled, when peace resumed, to cancel the advantageous conditions offered in the treaties by taxing financial profits. |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Michel Chamillart |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | financiers |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | taxation |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | Nine Years War |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | France |
| 690 ## - LOCAL SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM (OCLC, RLIN) | |
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element | contractors |
| 786 0# - DATA SOURCE ENTRY | |
| Note | Revue historique | o 676 | 4 | 2015-11-13 | p. 831-874 | 0035-3264 |
| 856 41 - ELECTRONIC LOCATION AND ACCESS | |
| Uniform Resource Identifier | <a href="https://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-historique-2015-4-page-831?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080">https://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-historique-2015-4-page-831?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080</a> |
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