A significant contribution. There is no other book like this one. It is agrand synthesis of mountains of previous work and colonial records. It pullstogether a ... » 

A significant contribution. There is no other book like this one. It is agrand synthesis of mountains of previous work and colonial records. It pullstogether a vast amount of scholarship of the past century or two and in aconvenient and accessible way. For anyone doing serious work on colonialtaxation it is the one book to have.Richard Sylla New York UniversityEncyclopedic and definitive. I was deeply impressed by the wealth of detailquite unknown to me. This is the fruit of intensive and extensivescholarship.Niall Ferguson Harvard University «