The Limits of Information Capacity: Evidence From the French Napoleonic Cadaster

To what extent do large state investments in information capacity - legibility - promote fiscal revenue? I argue that in unstable political conditions, the effects of legibility may be limited to the local level. I analyze the French Napoleonic cadaster, an ambitious land survey designed to rationalize taxation following the 1789 revolution. The initially centralized process was decentralized after the fall of the Napoleonic empire in 1815. Exploiting variation in cadastral operations over forty years of implementation, I show that legibility did not increase fiscal revenue at the aggregate level, and even reduced it in the short run. In the long run, I find positive local effects of the centralized cadaster on fiscal revenue. Legibility also facilitated local public works and shifts in the management of communal land. The cadaster thus failed an instrument of broad fiscal reform but arguably strengthened the state’s reach at the local level.