Shane Horwell

Shane completed his AHRC-funded (through London Arts and Humanities Partnership) PhD on taxation in Britain between the Excise Crisis of 1733 and the repeal of the income tax in 1816. More specifically, his research is about how dramatic expansion of taxation in this period was understood to have happened and the effect that this was perceived to have had on politics and society. In short, his thesis is a study of those thinkers and politicians who considered, wrote, and debated about the historical development of the modern system of taxation, its relationship with the emergence and nature of commercial society, and how a system of taxation could be made legitimate, just, and fair.

PhD

Supervisor: Julian Hoppit
Working title: 'Taxation in British economic and political thought, 1733-1816'
Expected completion date: Completed 2018

Conference papers and presentations

• 'The wealth of a nation: Adam Smith and the Earl of Lauderdale on the nature of wealth and the burden of taxation', History of Political Ideas early career seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London, May 2017
• 'Taxing wealth in eighteenth-century Britain', Economic History Society Annual Conference, Royal Holloway University of London, March 2017
• 'Justice in Adam Smith's theory of taxation', History of Economic Thought Annual Conference, Duke University, North Carolina, June 2016