A Fresh Approach to Southeast Asian History

Abstract

Revenue farming means in essence the sub-contracting by the state to private interests of the sovereign right of tax collection. For a lump sum or some periodic payment, the state leases what Reid (Chapter 4) refers to as a ‘licence to collect state revenue’. Although the state controls the means to compel individuals to pay taxes, its bureaucracy may be too small or too ineffective to collect payment on a routine basis. Moreover, it may not trust the aristocracy with the task for fear that too small a proportion of the revenues collected will be handed over to the central authority. By contracting out the task the government in effect hires a bureaucracy and, to some extent, a police force. The institution was widespread in Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but it used also to be common in Europe, West and South Asia (Chapter 3).