Amicable Grants (Suren Confederacy)

The four Amicable Grants enacted by the Majles-e Suren during its sixth session (1716 AN – 1720 AN) were a means by which the Suren Confederacy staved off the threat of immediate bankruptcy during the Kapavian insurgency by the expedient of directly extorting from the eminent notables of the realm.

Each grant, a levy of between one-sixth and one-tenth on the goods of the laity and on one-third of the goods of the Zurvanite clergy, was used as surety for loans placed by the Surenid government with foreign financial institutions in the wider Euran Economic Union and Community of Goldfield.

With each enactment, three in 1717 AN and a final one in 1719 AN, commissioners were dispatched into the satrapies of the Confederacy bearing the firman of the crown, detailing the financial need of the sovereign and asking that the satrap ensure that the wealthiest subjects in the province under his command would pay. The requested could not refuse to give, unless they denied the Shahbanu's need or professed their own poverty, a risky prospect that might leave any who did so vulnerable to accusations of treachery by agents of SAVAS.

As an expedient it was, naturally enough, deeply unpopular with those obliged to pay, and in any event was insufficient to cover scale of profligate borrowing undertaken by the Surenid government. This would result in the Debt Administration Act in 1719 AN and, in 1722 AN, the creation of the Board of Creditors for the Suren Confederacy at the insistence of the Committee of Euran Salvation.

The legacy of the Amicable Grants were still keenly felt a decade later, as amongst the first articles of the Grand Remonstrance passed in 1729 AN was the stipulation that no further levy should ever be demanded from the provinces by the crown.