Taxing Difference

The payment of tax and labor services formed the core of the relations between empires and their subjects as they significantly influence the income and labor force of all subjects. The articles in this volume discuss how imperial societies produced, organized and negotiated social differences between the subjugated populations by means of their tax systems. Therefore, the guiding question is: How did (early) modern imperial tax systems organize social difference and how were these differences negotiated in the imperial societies? Further, interrelated questions are: (1) How did the systematic classification of people issued through the tax system influence social categorizations such as ethnicity, class or gender? (2) How could the imperial subjects negotiate their categorization? What paths did they follow in this process of negotiation?

Sarah Albiez-Wieck holds a PhD in Anthropology of the Americas and is Senior Researcher at the Department for Iberian and Latin American History at the University of Cologne as well as principal investigator at the Global South Studies Center and member of the executive board of the German Association of Research about Latin America (ADLAF). Her research interests include questions of migration and belonging, empires and colonialism, with a focus on colonial Mexico and Peru in a global context.