gabelle

Gabelle comes from Old French gabelle, which derived from Italian gabella, itself from Arabic qabāla (قبالة), meaning 'tax' or 'contract.' The Arabic root traveled through Norman Sicily into Italian and then French. By the 1200s, gabelle was a general word for any indirect tax in France.

In 1286, Philip IV of France made the gabelle specifically a salt tax—and salt was not optional. French law required every person over eight years old to purchase a minimum quantity of salt each year from royally authorized dealers at royally set prices. This was the sel du devoir, the 'salt of duty.' Refusal was punishable by prison or galley service.

The tax was wildly uneven. In the pays de grande gabelle, salt cost thirty to forty times the production price. In Brittany, salt was nearly tax-free. Smuggling between regions became a major industry. By the 1780s, France employed over 20,000 armed guards just to patrol salt borders within its own territory. The gabelle cost almost as much to enforce as it collected.

The gabelle was abolished on March 21, 1790, during the French Revolution. It had lasted 504 years. The Cahiers de Doléances—lists of grievances submitted before the Revolution—mention the gabelle more frequently than almost any other complaint. A tax on the most basic mineral in cooking became a symbol of everything wrong with the ancien régime.