This is a major study of state finance throughout Europe from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. It is an immensely ambitious comparative analysis of economic and fiscal development over many countries and several centuries, written by a team of leading European scholars.

`This ambitious collaboration has brought to bear an immense amount of data and expertise across a very broad chronological and geographical range. This range and variety makes it an extremely valuable book and it whets the appetite for the other projected volumes ... A rich and thought-provoking book that will serve as a work of reference for the generalist and a point of departure for future research. It deserves a wide readership and will certainly stimulate further comparative work on crucial aspects of European history in these six centuries.' The Economic History Review `in Richard Bonney the series has foind exactly the right blend of qualities to see it successfully launched...the book is its own monument...will this book and its components sit, like the CMH, dusty and unconsulted on the open shelves indispensably ignored? This one deserves a better fate, for it brings into focus some fundamental aspect so of the fiscal old regime, not to mention the later Middle Ages...like some of the best books, it offers worhtwhile insights and information whenever it falls open, and has no rival or counterpart anywhere else, Future historians of old regime Europe will be unable to imagine what life was like without it' German History `uppressive collection of essays ... Bonney and his collaborators have provided a massive agenda for future historians, presenting them with a body of data and establishing taxonomies of the forms of domain and tax states.' Times Higher Education Supplement `Specialists from different countries offer a new approach to the development of state finance and fiscal systems in Europe from the 13th to the 18th centuries.' The Medieval World `The importance of a state's fiscal constitution in reflecting its character and development has not always been acknowleded by historians, thought it was often prominent in the minds of contemporaries. This book renders future neglect inexcusable, Its eclectic and comparative approach amply illustrates the diversity but consistency of the European pattern of state-building.' G.L. Harriss, EHR Apr.96

Amongst Bonney's previous books are The European Dynastic States 1494-1660 (Short Oxford History of the Modern World series, OUP, 1991), and Society and Government in France under Richelieu and Mazarin 1624-1641 (Macmillan, 1988)