Taxation in Colonial America

Special Recognition in the 2009 Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Awards "Running to nearly a thousand pages, this massive compendium of Colonial American tax data draws together disparate primary and secondary sources in an impressive feat of scholarship. Rabushka provides context for the wealth of public finance detail through a constitutional history ranging from the Magna Carta, through the early Colonial charters and Parliament's subordination of the monarchy, the Parliament's final confrontations with the increasingly assertive Colonies... Encyclopedia, with much narratives committed to tax listings, this volume is a valuable resource for research."--R. S. Hewett, Choice "[T]hanks to Rabushka's work, more can now be done on the history of trans-Atlantic connections. The originality of this book is in its mastery of the printed secondary and primary works, thus offering the most definitive resource to date on the subject of taxation in colonial America."--William J. Ashworth, Enterprise & Society "Alvin Rabushka has written an extraordinary history of early American taxation. Weighing in at 3 pounds, 5 ounces, and running to almost 1,000 pages, it's a big book. But it needs to be, for this is historical work on a grand scale. Rabushka has managed to compress into a single volume a detailed history of the colonial tax systems between the settlement of Jamestown and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. It's an extraordinary accomplishment."--Joseph J. Thorndike, Tax Notes "Makes an enormously significant contribution to scholarship on the British North American colonies. Every university with an active graduate program, plus all the major independent research centers, should add this jewel to their library holdings. Alvin Rabushka has produced an astonishing and overwhelming labor of love, and colonial historians will remain forever in the author's debt for his prodigious research on the various tax systems in the thirteen colonies from 1607 through 1775... This handsomely produced volume could become the standard reference on colonial taxation for the next thousand years. Yes, that long."--Edward J. Perkins, Journal of American History "The volume is one that scholars will find enduringly useful."--American Historical Review "Written for the average layperson without a detailed knowledge of history or taxation, the book is certain to become a standard in the field."--Stephanie Towery, Law Library Journal "Every scholar of colonial America should have this book on their shelf."--Farley Grubb, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History "Rabushka's work is encyclopedic in scope, thorough and fastidious in its mobilization of both tax-history scholarship and primary sources on colonial finance, and probing in its analysis of budgets and taxes. His mastery and crystal-clear explanations of previously baffling intricacies of colonial taxation means that his book is now the best starting point for anyone interested in the colonial foundations of American taxation."--W. Elliot Brownlee, Harvard Business History Review "This massive compendium of colonial American tax data draws together disparate primary and secondary sources in an impressive feat of scholarship. It provides an encyclopedic account of taxation in all thirteen colonies from the onset of European colonization to the American Revolution."--Roger Hewett, EH.net