Time to reboot accounting history – Evidence from scholarship on double entry

Abstract

To economic historians, double entry bookkeeping served two primary purposes before 1800: control over debt and distant agents, factors, and partners. Few used it to identify overall profit or wealth, doing so only when accountable to others. They reached their conclusions from examination of primary sources within the wider context in which businesses operated. In contrast, the traditional antiquarian accounting history literature using the same sources tells a very different history, dominated by a focus on technique, present-minded teleological research methods, and an absence of context and critical reflection. The ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the bookkeeping is described, but ‘why’ is not asked, leaving motivations unknown, practices neither understood nor explained; and unsupportable assertions are accepted as axiomatic fact. Due to a lack of new enquiry, this literature is becoming increasingly corrupted by misunderstanding. This article considers why this came about and calls for change before it is too late.