The Fiscal State in Ireland, 1691–1769

This article examines the Irish fiscal-military state in the eighteenth century. It locates the Irish state within a broader imperial context showing how Ireland contributed to the wider British imperial project. In particular, this article looks at the development of an efficient tax-gathering apparatus, showing how the revenue board, the most pervasive agency of the eighteenth-century Irish state, extracted increasing levels of taxation from a sometimes hostile population. Drawing extensively on the records of the Irish revenue commissioners, a very rich if under utilized source, it demonstrates for the first time the levels of taxation raised in Ireland, while also exploring how these taxes were collected. It concludes that this period saw the expansion of an increasingly professional bureaucracy, challenging existing interpretations that have focused predominantly on politicization. The final section looks at issues of evasion and compliance, showing the difficulties faced by the Irish state in this period, as it expanded deeper into Irish society.