The working class's experience of the tax system is an important aspect of its relationship with the state. This article examines the nature of this connexion during the First World War and its aftermath when fiscal policy was subject to intense political pressure. Two themes are paramount, those of resistance and appropriation. From the point of view of governments the less tax collection encouraged class-based opposition the better. Because the level of tax payments depended on varied circumstances within social groups – caused by family size or patterns of consumption, for example – the lines of differentiation were more finely drawn than the contours of social class. Many tax payments affected the individual as a citizen within the political system rather than as a producer within the economy. The articulation of resentment about tax burdens with conflicts in the economy was not therefore automatic. However, when governments were closely involved in the running of the economy, as in the First World War, it was helpful to use the tax system as an instrument of social justice, so that efforts to generate a common purpose might not be impaired by resentment of the disproportionate gains of others. In these circumstances taxpayers might well be encouraged to see the tax system as a way of appropriating or limiting the wealth of other classes, in a way which did bring it into closer relationship with the economy.

The most important elements of Vichy industrial organization were the comités d'organisation (CO). The procedure for the establishment of these bodies was laid down by decree on 16 August 1940. In practice the functions assumed by them varied considerably. But broadly a CO was to oversee one particular industry and to liaise between that industry and the authorities (both German and French). One of the first of these bodies to be established (on 9 November 1940) was the comité d'organisation de l'industrie des combustibles minéraux solides (COH).

This investigation and my ability to describe alien office structure is due more to chance than prior intention as it arose out of a difficult examination of the life of Thomas Pitt, second Lord Camelford (1775–1804). Lacking direct sources about him, I turned to an examination of his friends and associates and gradually a pattern emerged: an international network of secret agents. But who directed them, and from where? For a time the answer eluded me, and I was not helped by the statement in the guide to the public record office, that no alien office correspondence remains. In fact there is a considerable quantity, but with the exception of H.O. 5, which is entirely alien office, it is scattered in other H.O. classes as well as various F.O., W.O., and A.D.M. classes. But the late Alfred Cobban provided a lead and he had clearly recognized 1792 as a turning point in secret service. Others who have written before on this subject limited themselves to an examination of one of William Wickham's principal agents, Dandré, no doubt chiefly because at the time they wrote, much material that I have been able to consult was not then available to the public; i.e. a large part of the Wickham collection; the Talbot papers and the residue of Lord Grenville's papers.

The history of the East India Company's rule of India is marked by sporadic outbursts of civil-military conflict. It was not unknown in India for European officers to down tools and commit acts that bordered on outright mutiny. Perhaps this could be expected when, on the one hand, the Company, as a commercial body, sought to maximize its profits, while on the other, the army was essentially a mercenary force, ever grasping for a larger slice of the fiscal pie. If, however, we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of their relations, we find that the issues at stake lose their simplicity. In the early nineteenth century, a third group came into play, further confusing the state of civil-military relations in India. The Anglo-Indian bureaucracy, which had incorporated military attitudes into the operating system of British India, had begun to assert itself. Through such spokesmen as Thomas Munro, John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe and Mountstuart Elphinstone, an increasingly militarized rule of British India was put forward, angering the court of directors and allowing the officers to mask their private interest under the guise of the national interest. This ideology of militarism, however, must be firmly placed within the context of nineteenth-century British India for it bore little resemblance to those strains of militarism witnessed elsewhere.