The finances of Coimbra’s City Council at the end of the Ancient Regime (1762-1820) [I]: the revenues

the revenues

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the revenues of Coimbra’s City Council, between 1762 and 1820, throughout the Livros de Receita e Despesa (Income and Expense Books), currently under Coimbra’s Municipal Historical Archive custody. This was a period of great management difficulties for the city’s council, which led to some significant changes in the way the revenues were levied.

The central question to be answered is to ascertain whether the financial difficulties conditioned the performance of its multiple functions. In order to do so, we aim to present the income structure, explaining all the categories of revenues, how they were collected and their evolution throughout our chronology; to analyze the income growth, in comparison with the progress of the expenditure and balances; to identify the similarities and differences between the examples of Coimbra and other contemporary cities, pointing out common characteristics and local features; in a long-term analysis, we proceeded to a comparative analysis with Coimbra’s 17^th century finances, in order to demonstrate the continuities and ruptures in municipal income evolution. We intend, with this study, to give a contribution to the knowledge of the economic situation at the end of the Ancient Regime.