Skip to main content
Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services

Manchester University Press

Visit our Partner Page See all our books
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

4 The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company

Abstract

While today it is widely accepted that some right to sovereign seizure is a common feature of all existing polities, this framework is premised on the normative relationship between sovereign power and taxation. What, then, are we to make of a tax regime haphazardly developed and administered by a corporation and designed not simply to bind the ruler to the ruled but to enrich corporate shareholders? Beginning in the 1880s, this chapter charts the emergence of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA). The Crown and the Sultan of Zanzibar authorised the operations of the joint-stock company, proclaiming it the de jure sovereign in Eastern Africa. A core sovereign prerogative granted to the company was the right to ‘raise taxes, impose customs dues, administer justice, make treaties, and generally assume the powers of government within a specified area’. This regime of value capture would not only constitute the Company’s revenue regime, but was to form the basis of corporate profits and the dividends of British shareholders. However, and as I show, administrators faced severe limitations in securing a monopoly over valuation as they confronted competing visions of the relationship between seizure and political authority. These struggles notwithstanding, taxation emerges in this period not as a stable category binding the ruler to the ruled, but as a flexible though ideologically dense claim on the public hoard, one which calls into question the epistemological status of taxation in its connection to sovereignty.

Abstract

While today it is widely accepted that some right to sovereign seizure is a common feature of all existing polities, this framework is premised on the normative relationship between sovereign power and taxation. What, then, are we to make of a tax regime haphazardly developed and administered by a corporation and designed not simply to bind the ruler to the ruled but to enrich corporate shareholders? Beginning in the 1880s, this chapter charts the emergence of the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA). The Crown and the Sultan of Zanzibar authorised the operations of the joint-stock company, proclaiming it the de jure sovereign in Eastern Africa. A core sovereign prerogative granted to the company was the right to ‘raise taxes, impose customs dues, administer justice, make treaties, and generally assume the powers of government within a specified area’. This regime of value capture would not only constitute the Company’s revenue regime, but was to form the basis of corporate profits and the dividends of British shareholders. However, and as I show, administrators faced severe limitations in securing a monopoly over valuation as they confronted competing visions of the relationship between seizure and political authority. These struggles notwithstanding, taxation emerges in this period not as a stable category binding the ruler to the ruled, but as a flexible though ideologically dense claim on the public hoard, one which calls into question the epistemological status of taxation in its connection to sovereignty.

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables x
  5. Notes on contributors xi
  6. Preface xiv
  7. Acknowledgements xix
  8. Introduction 1
  9. Part I: Institutional and fiscal issues
  10. 1 The great gage 19
  11. 2 The cost of thrift 37
  12. 3 Madagascar and French imperial mercantilism 57
  13. 4 The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company 79
  14. 5 Internal inequalities 98
  15. Part II: Taxation and welfare
  16. 6 Taxation, welfare, and inequalities in the Spanish imperial state 121
  17. 7 Political economies of welfare of the Spanish Empire 138
  18. 8 Poverty, health, and imperial wealth in early modern Scotland 157
  19. 9 Compromise and adaptation in colonial taxation 177
  20. 10 Imperial revenue and national welfare 198
  21. Part III: Post-colonial legacies
  22. 11 Making investor states 219
  23. 12 The lure of the welfare state following decolonisation in Kenya 240
  24. 13 From capitation taxes to tax havens 259
  25. 14 Imperial extraction and ‘tax havens’ 280
  26. 15 The Crown Agents and the CDC Group 299
  27. Afterword 319
  28. Index 329
Imperial Inequalities
This chapter is in the book Imperial Inequalities
https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526166159.00013

Chapters in this book

  1. Front Matter i
  2. Contents v
  3. List of figures vii
  4. List of tables x
  5. Notes on contributors xi
  6. Preface xiv
  7. Acknowledgements xix
  8. Introduction 1
  9. Part I: Institutional and fiscal issues
  10. 1 The great gage 19
  11. 2 The cost of thrift 37
  12. 3 Madagascar and French imperial mercantilism 57
  13. 4 The right to sovereign seizure? Taxation, valuation, and the Imperial British East Africa Company 79
  14. 5 Internal inequalities 98
  15. Part II: Taxation and welfare
  16. 6 Taxation, welfare, and inequalities in the Spanish imperial state 121
  17. 7 Political economies of welfare of the Spanish Empire 138
  18. 8 Poverty, health, and imperial wealth in early modern Scotland 157
  19. 9 Compromise and adaptation in colonial taxation 177
  20. 10 Imperial revenue and national welfare 198
  21. Part III: Post-colonial legacies
  22. 11 Making investor states 219
  23. 12 The lure of the welfare state following decolonisation in Kenya 240
  24. 13 From capitation taxes to tax havens 259
  25. 14 Imperial extraction and ‘tax havens’ 280
  26. 15 The Crown Agents and the CDC Group 299
  27. Afterword 319
  28. Index 329
Downloaded on 29.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.7765/9781526166159.00013/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button