Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France: Liberté, Égalité, Fiscalité. By Michael Kwass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xvii, 353. $69.95

Historians commonly attribute the origins of the French Revolution to the crown's relative inability to tax members of the elite. The proliferation of tax-exemptions, the argument goes, contributed to the fiscal crisis that brought about the collapse of absolutism. While Michael Kwass sets out to disprove this thesis, taxation nonetheless remains central to his understanding of the Revolution's origins. The crown did indeed succeed in taxing nobles and other members of the privileged elite, he argues, and yet the very debates and contestations that arose from such policies laid the groundwork for a new revolutionary political culture.