Rafael Torres Sanchez
University of Navarra, History, Faculty Member
- Military History, Eighteenth Century History, Fiscal Military State, Early Modern economic and social history, Spanish History, Edad Moderna, and 17 moreMaritime and Oceanic History, Early modern Spain, History Portuguese and Spanish, War of the Spanish Succession, Historia Moderna, Early Modern Europe, Colonial Latin American History, Atlantic World, Latin American and Caribbean History, The Age of Revolutions in the Atlantic World, Maritime History, Private military contractors, Economic History, Latin American Economic History, History, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Latin American Studiesedit
- Rafael Torres Sánchez (1962) is Professor of History and Economic History at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. His m... moreRafael Torres Sánchez (1962) is Professor of History and Economic History at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain. His main study area is eighteenth-century Spanish warfare and its interconnection with the development of the state and its economy.
He is the author of Constructing a Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century Spain, Palgrave-Macmillan, Hampshire, UK, (2015), foreword: Patrick K. O’Brien, LSE, University of Oxford; El precio de la guerra: El estado fiscal-militar de Carlos III, 1779-1783, Marcial Pons, Madrid, (2013); La llave de todos los tesoros: La Tesorería General de Carlos III, Silex, Madrid, (2012); and also collaborated with Stephen Conway on an edition of The Spending of the States: Military Expenditure during the Long Eighteenth Century: Patterns, Organisation and Consequences, 1650-1815, VDM, (2011). His work also includes War, State and Development: Fiscal-Military States in the Eighteenth Century, Eunsa, Pamplona, (2007). His website can be found at http://www.unav.edu/centro/contractorstate/edit
This book offers a new slant on the relations between warfare and state construction. Historians looking at how war funding impinged on state development, and also how state growth made wars more demanding affairs, have tended to downplay... more
This book offers a new slant on the relations between warfare and state construction. Historians looking at how war funding impinged on state development, and also how state growth made wars more demanding affairs, have tended to downplay the role of military provisioning entrepreneurs. Written off as corrupt and selfish, these entrepreneurs jarred with the received view of a rationally growing and modernising state. This book shows that the state-entrepreneur relationship was much more fluid and constant than previously thought. The state was not able to enforce a top-down military supply policy; at the same time it benefited from the entrepreneurs’ collaboration and their shared mercantilist ambitions. The entrepreneurs’ mobilisation of military supplies was crucial for extending state authority and helped to knit together national and colonial markets. But this fluid state-entrepreneur relationship gradually became shrouded in privileges and monopolies, not so much ideology driven or imposed by the entrepreneurs but rather as an arrangement exploited by the state to boost its control over them, whittling down middlemen and ensuring the solvency and creditworthiness of the chosen few. This arrangement spiralled into a risky inter-dependence and cramped entrepreneurial competition. The book furnishes new insights into the role of military entrepreneurs in debates about warfare and state construction.
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espanolEste trabajo ofrece los resultados de un proyecto de innovacion docente dirigido a trabajar y fomentar el uso de las categorias como herramienta, con el fin ultimo de aproximar la investigacion a la docencia. Se toma como hilo... more
espanolEste trabajo ofrece los resultados de un proyecto de innovacion docente dirigido a trabajar y fomentar el uso de las categorias como herramienta, con el fin ultimo de aproximar la investigacion a la docencia. Se toma como hilo conductor y materia de analisis al empresario y los grupos empresariales espanoles desde el siglo XVIII hasta la actualidad. Se explica el procedimiento didactico seguido y los problemas metodologicos a los que nos hemos enfrentado. Finalmente, se analiza las practicas realizadas con varios grupos de estudiantes de Historia Economica y los resultados alcanzados. EnglishThis work shows the results of an innovative teaching project geared towards working with categories as a tool, with the overall aim of bringing research to bear on teaching. The connecting thread and analysis material taken for this purpose is Spanish business groups from the eighteenth century to date. An explanation is given of the teaching procedure followed and the methodological pro...
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The detrimental effects traditionally assigned to warfare in the development of pre-industrial economies have obscured the prominent role that military entrepreneurs played in economic development in this period. Historiography minimises... more
The detrimental effects traditionally assigned to warfare in the development of pre-industrial economies have obscured the prominent role that military entrepreneurs played in economic development in this period. Historiography minimises the extent to which war and the concomitant strengthening of the central state provided a whole new range of opportunities for capital investment, a tendency that has been strengthened by the paradigm of Redlich’s ‘decline of the soldier-entrepreneur’ and the technological determinism of the debate on the Military Revolution among others. The aim of this introduction is to look into the background of this relative lack of interest and to reaffirm the mutual dependence of eighteenth-century state-formation and the business of war.
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War, Taxes and Finance in the Long Eighteenth Century Volume 25 - Special Issue 1 - April 2018 Latest issue of Financial History Review Taxation is accepted as a fact of modern life, despite recurring political conflict over the nature... more
War, Taxes and Finance in the Long Eighteenth Century
Volume 25 - Special Issue 1 - April 2018
Latest issue of Financial History Review
Taxation is accepted as a fact of modern life, despite recurring political conflict over the nature and direction of fiscal policies. Most financiers regard obligations issued by the state as a safe investment option. Neither taxation nor state obligations were taken for granted during much of the history of public finance, however, at least not before the early 1800s. The ‘tax state’ developed in fits and starts, driven by the exigencies of warfare, which provided the main rationale for raising state income. Although wartime fiscal innovations eventually facilitated the rise of an efficient military state, the options available for implementing such improvements and preferences for specific fiscal or financial instruments varied greatly across early modern states. Focusing on the ‘long’ eighteenth century, this introduction presents a framework for assessing these differences and introduces the other articles in this special issue.
Volume 25 - Special Issue 1 - April 2018
Latest issue of Financial History Review
Taxation is accepted as a fact of modern life, despite recurring political conflict over the nature and direction of fiscal policies. Most financiers regard obligations issued by the state as a safe investment option. Neither taxation nor state obligations were taken for granted during much of the history of public finance, however, at least not before the early 1800s. The ‘tax state’ developed in fits and starts, driven by the exigencies of warfare, which provided the main rationale for raising state income. Although wartime fiscal innovations eventually facilitated the rise of an efficient military state, the options available for implementing such improvements and preferences for specific fiscal or financial instruments varied greatly across early modern states. Focusing on the ‘long’ eighteenth century, this introduction presents a framework for assessing these differences and introduces the other articles in this special issue.
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Studies of the public management of taxation and finance matters have tended to focus on legislation and the political structure. There would nonetheless seem to be a glaring difference between state intentions and actual practice. Our... more
Studies of the public management of taxation and finance matters have tended to focus on legislation and the political structure. There would nonetheless seem to be a glaring difference between state intentions and actual practice. Our objective here is to assess the gap between political rhetoric and actual policy enforcement. Looking at a specific tax hike in the second half of the eighteenth century in Spain, we examine the arguments used and facts hushed up to justify the change, investigate how the political regime might constrain these arguments and, finally, how the information given on the whole process was manipulated to woo over the taxpayers. We argue that legislation was by no means synonymous with actual enforcement of policies precisely because it had to be communicated to society.
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La importancia concedida por los estados en la Edad Moderna a la guerra y al mantenimiento del orden público hizo que la mayor parte de su actividad política y recursos se destinasen a estos fines. Era muy poco lo que los estados podían... more
La importancia concedida por los estados en la Edad Moderna a la guerra y al mantenimiento del orden público hizo que la mayor parte de su actividad política y recursos se destinasen a estos fines. Era muy poco lo que los estados podían hacer sin contar con el consenso y la colaboración de la sociedad que gobernaban, que reconocía las ventajas de esas funciones protectoras del estado. Aquellos estados y sociedades lograron movilizar recursos cada vez mayores hacia la guerra, y al hacerlo fueron construyendo nuevas relaciones políticas y formas de ejercicio de la autoridad, que terminaron afectando a la construcción del propio estado y sus relaciones con aquellas sociedades. La Red Imperial Contractor State Group (Red Imperial CSG) reúne a más de una veintena de investigadores de universidades americanas y europeas con el objetivo de estudiar cómo la movilización de recursos militares afectó a la construcción de la monarquía imperial hispánica. El marco cronológico elegido es amplio, desde el siglo XVII al primer tercio del siglo XIX, porque interesa enfatizar las continuidades y cambios en la etapa álgida de la construcción imperial. Sostenemos que la movilización de recursos de todo tipo (hombres, barcos, materiales, ideas) para sostener la autoridad imperial contribuyó a la construcción del Estado y de unas fuerzas armadas permanentes y profesionales, además de que las fórmulas y métodos empleados en esa movilización contribuyeron a definir las formas de gobierno y articularon las relaciones entre el centro y la periferia. En este congreso se pone el énfasis en los problemas derivados de una movilización de recursos para las armas navales, porque tuvo una mayor incidencia en la articulación de la Monarquía Imperial Hispánica.