CHAPTER VIII SHEEP TAXES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION Significance of sheep dues as a pre-feudal tax on movable property. Town or local sheep taxes in North Africa, Provence, the Pyrenees, Aragon, Valencia, Navarre, and Portugal. Royal or state sheep taxes in southern Italy, Aragon, Valencia, and Navarre. To the herdsman the nomad flocks were a means of livelihood; to the sheep owner they meant an income; and similarly to the government of the towns and of the nation, they represented a legitimate object of taxation, and all too frequently-of ruthless extortion. The assets of the wandering herdsman were quite visible; and, friendless stranger that he was, the temptation to make him pay heavily for his 'privileges' and 'trespasses' can readily be understood. At first the coming of the migrants aroused among the wayside communities the hostile query, "How can we prevent or hinder the devastating intrusions of these unwelcome strangers?" But as the migrations continued from generation to generation in spite of heavy fines and restrictions, the attitude of local and later of national officials became rather, "How can we capitalize the fiscal possibilities of this ebb and flow of movable property past our city gates ? A survey of the experience of various Mediterranean peoples with the taxation of migratory flocks brings to light two aspects of the question. First, there was the problem of town or local finance, which involved the ancient social conflict between the wandering herdsman and the sedentary husbandman, and the assessment of penal dues upon the former for his supposed transgressions against the latter. Secondly, in point both of origin and of importance, there was the question of national finance, the rise of a central power and its efforts to secure much needed revenues from the migratory flocks. It should be made clear at once, however, that these two fiscal aspects of the industry were not sharply separated from each other either chronologically or in subject matter. Although an attempt will be made below to 10 examine the two separately, this should not be taken as an indication that local sheep taxes were common during one period of pastoral history, and national imposts during another. In fact, there was never a period throughout the long annals of sheep migrations when we do not find friction between the herdsmen and the towns, with its invariable accompaniment of fines, penalties, and taxes. The second or national phase of this topic emerges from the local taxation of the industry with the growth of a strong central power, which, finding the towns reaping financial advantage from penalties on the wandering flocks, soon devised a method of accomplishing the same result for its own benefit. The struggles between royal and local officials over the judicial matters of the industry have already been discussed. The subject of the sheep taxes, though analogous to the judicial question in that it too deals with national and local elements, is nevertheless distinctive in that it presents not a struggle between the two, but a development, a growth of one out of the other. Whether we consider the crude form of the Algerian migratory pastoral industry, or the much more intricate organization of the Roman flocks in southern Italy, there appears the same striking fact of certain financial obligations of the herdsmen to the landowners. This feature is found in the earliest evidences of the industry in the countries where it can best be studied: Italy, North Africa, southern France, and the Spanish kingdoms.1 In each of these areas the first indications of annual sheep migrations show $ the towns undertaking to assess damages and penalties upon the intruders on their commons. Then too, there were frequent violations of local laws by the strangers, trespasses on forbidden pastures, and illicit passage over toll bridges. These and many other points gave the local officers ample opportunity to exact ifees, dues, and taxes from the passing herdsmen." 1 There are ample evidences of the existence of this form of sheep industry in Roumania, Scotland, Switzerland, Chile, and elsewhere (O. Densusianu, Pastoritul la Popoarele Romanice, Bucharest, 1913; Duke of Argyll, Scotland as it was and as it is, Edinburgh, 1887, 2 vols., i, pp. 255 ff.; Geographical Review (New York), Oct., 1918, pp. 370–371); but the materials upon the fiscal aspects of the question in those countries are very meagre. The taxation of the herdsmen and their products when they appeared in the The significance of this question of local sheep taxes lies not only in its importance in the fiscal history of the industry itself. More especially to be noted is the evidence given upon the antiquity of the taxation of movable property in Mediterranean countries. The prevalence of such taxation long before any feudal land taxes contradicts the commonly accepted opinion, which had held that such feudal dues were the predecessors of assessments upon movable and personal property. The taxation of migratory live stock-in every sense a movable propertywas by no means a mediaeval device created to supplement inadequate and antiquated feudal dues. The appearance of such pastoral taxes came wherever and whenever the industry itself occurred in the Roman Empire, in Visigothic Spain, in the Algerian hinterland, in mediaeval Provence, in present-day Chile quite regardless of any precedents in the form of feudal taxation. This fact qualifies considerably the usual assertion that taxes on movables were introduced only with the growing inadequacy of the old feudal land taxes. In southern Italy, for example, the earliest evidence of the taxation of migratory sheep occurs with the first indications of the industry itself, namely in the days of Julius Caesar and his immediate successors. The public officials of that region have continued to collect such taxes from the early days of the Roman Empire down to the present day, with scarcely an interruption. It is true that there were countries, such as Catalonia, where the growth of migratory sheep raising, and the consequent increase of revenue from it, aided the government in dispensing with the old feudal aids. This fact, however, does not modify the above conclusion as to the relative positions of these two forms of taxes. The appearance of migratory flocks in the Mediterranean countries brought on, as an inevitable consequence, the perennial struggle between pastoral and agrarian interests. This hostility local markets will be taken up later, in the examination of the efforts of the towns to restrict any outside or nationalizing influence upon local affairs. This takes up the important question of the growth of the national market as opposed to the local one. 1 William Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (4th ed., Cambridge, England, 1905-07, 3 vols.), i, p. 152. |