The way I heard it, the move from Mar to Jan was not for political reasons, but for tax reasons.
Spring makes sense for starting a new year; rebirth and all that. But it's lousy as the start of a tax year: who's to say whether all the new animals in the herds got born last year, and are already taxable, or this year, and are not?
Start your tax year in the middle of winter, however, (like astronomers used to switch days at noon instead of at midnight) and all is good: no livestock is getting born midwinter so the only fuzziness left is did that sheep die this tax year or last? Much more legible.
> The way I heard it, the move from Mar to Jan was not for political reasons, but for tax reasons.
The start of the year has moved more than once. The ancient Romans moved it from March to January.
For whatever reason, in early modern England, it was back to starting in March-legally speaking, although many of the common people followed the Continental practice of starting it in January. So, when the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 came into force in 1752, it didn’t just introduce the Gregorian calendar and skip 11 days in September, it also moved the start of 1752 from 25 March back to 1 Jan. So 1751 was only 9 and a bit months long - it went 24 Mar 1749, 25 Mar 1750, …, 31 Dec 1750, 1 Jan 1750, …, 24 Mar 1750, 25 Mar 1751, …, 31 Dec 1751, 1 Jan 1752
Scotland had already moved the new year from 25 Mar to 1 January in 1600.
>The way I heard it, the move from Mar to Jan was not for political reasons, but for tax reasons.
That sounds unlikely. The tax collector rarely limits their payment demands to just once a year, and many businesses operate on a fiscal year rather than a calendar year.
My favorite explanation is that the move was for military reasons. Because Rome had already conquered all nearby lands, they had to mobilize earlier to be ready for the campaign season. That meant elections and many other processes had to be done earlier as well.
Spring makes sense for starting a new year; rebirth and all that. But it's lousy as the start of a tax year: who's to say whether all the new animals in the herds got born last year, and are already taxable, or this year, and are not?
Start your tax year in the middle of winter, however, (like astronomers used to switch days at noon instead of at midnight) and all is good: no livestock is getting born midwinter so the only fuzziness left is did that sheep die this tax year or last? Much more legible.