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2 results

  • vi - Economics and Fiscal Policy

  • Edited and translated by David W. Carrithers, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Philip Stewart, Duke University, North Carolina
  • Book:
    Montesquieu
    Published online:
    02 November 2020
    Print publication:
    19 November 2020, pp 206-223

  • Summary

    In Memorandum on the Debts of State (1715) Montesquieu explains how to curb France’s debt crisis stemming principally from Louis XIV’s war-mongering. Rather than recommending declaration of bankruptcy, he proposes a gradual reduction of the debt by means of a partial repudiation. The greater the proportion of an individual’s overall wealth invested in the crown’s debt, the less the reduction would be, since such individuals would have fewer other investments. Montesquieu was confident his debt reduction plan would succeed and predicted the king would be able to reduce taxes. In his Considerations on the Wealth of Spain (1727–1728) he explains that the main reason for the collapse of Spain as a powerhouse in modern Europe was that the Spanish became the victims of inflation. The more bullion brought to Spain’s shores, the less valuable it became since more and more specie chased roughly the same amount of goods.

  • 9 - The Eastern Front

  • from Part II - Theatres of War
  • Edited by Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the First World War
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    09 January 2014, pp 234-265

  • Summary

    On 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The Serb government declared that the political strategy was not concerned by an event that was internal to Austria-Hungary because the authors of the attack were all Bosniacs and thus Austro-Hungarian subjects. Austria was increasingly weakened by pressures from north and south, and would be incapable of following Germany into a war. The German rulers were convinced that rapid action would prevent the other powers from intervening in the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. If Russia did not fall in with the wish for localisation and acted militarily in support of Serbia, it would show proof of its war-mongering and pan-Slavist aims. In the end, if a climate of risk of war had developed, it was indeed the army leaders who provoked the outbreak of the war, applying pressure on hesitant or paralysed civilian powers.