The Fiscal Problems of Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Abstract

The assertion that a country is rich, or a government is powerful, is usually followed by some description of what that entails. Conversely, poverty and weakness are not so often explored in all their detail, though they too are complicated matters. Public finance is one point of entry.1 According to Joseph Schumpeter, it is ‘one of the best starting points for an investigation of society, especially though not exclusively of its political life. The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare – all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases’.