Gabelle
The gabelle (French pronunciation: [ɡabɛl]) was a very unpopular tax on salt in France that was established during the mid-14th century and lasted, with brief lapses and revisions, until 1946. The term gabelle is derived from the Italian gabella (a duty), itself originating from the Arabic word qabala (to receive).
In France, the gabelle was originally an indirect tax that was applied to agricultural and industrial commodities, such as bed sheets, wheat, spices, and wine. However, from the 14th century onward, the gabelle was limited and solely referred to the French crown’s taxation of salt.
Because the gabelle affected all French citizens (for use in cooking, for preserving food, for making cheese and for raising livestock) and propagated extreme regional disparities in salt prices, the salt tax stood as one of the most hated and grossly unequal forms of revenue generation in the country’s history. Repealed in 1790 by the National Assembly in the midst of the French Revolution, the gabelle was later reinstated by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806. It was briefly terminated and reinstated again during the French Second Republic and ultimately abolished in 1945 following France’s liberation from Nazi Germany.
In 1229, when the Albigensian Crusades were brought to a close by Louis IX and his mother (Blanche of Castile), France gained control of the Rhone Estuary and nearby Mediterranean coast. This led to the establishment of the first French Mediterranean port city of Aigues-Mortes in 1246, literally translated to Dead Waters, and the creation of a vast network of salt-evaporation ponds. These saltworks would fund St. Louis’ (as he was later called) ambitions of crusading in the Middle East. A profitable means of generating revenue for France’s wars, this royal control over salt and its production stands as the origin of the infamous French salt gabelle.
A temporary tax under St. Louis, in 1259, his brother Charles I further established royal control over salt, in this case over the Berre saltworks near Marseilles. This salt administration would eventually encompass Peccais, Aigues-Mortes, and the region of Camargue and come to be known as the Pays de petites gabelles. On March 16, 1341, Philip VI of Valois established the first permanent royal tax on salt in France known as the Pays de grandes gabelles.
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