Abstract
The third issue of Volume 18 illuminates the wide international appeal of Accounting History, featuring six articles set in an array of diverse locations around the globe by authors who are located in Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The issue also includes a number of book reviews and an announcement.
Little is known about accounting’s past in Cyprus, and Clarke and Varnava contribute to filling this vacuum by focusing on the last four decades of a period corresponding to the island’s colonial status. More specifically, the development of accounting in Cyprus in the period from post-World War 1 to Cypriot independence in 1960 is examined. British administration commenced in 1878 and, despite Cyprus’s links to both Greece and Turkey during the study period, it was the experience of British rule that contributed notable accounting developments and had a major influence on accounting practice.
Ji and Lu investigate bookkeeping developments in China, particularly during the twentieth century, and specifically examine the evolution from single entry to double entry bookkeeping methods and swaps between the use of Western-style double entry bookkeeping and Chinese indigenous double entry bookkeeping. The authors explore these historical developments using the “Universal Darwinism” theory on the basis that the biological principles of variation, selection and inheritance can be applied to cultural and other forms of evolution.
Newson examines the private accounts of Manoel Batista Peres, a seventeenth-century Portuguese slave trader on the African coast. The surviving accounts of the 1620s and 1630s took the double-entry form, but, in the absence of a metallic currency, they were kept in cotton cloth money. The author explores why the accounts took the form in which they were prepared and also endeavours to make a contribution to the debate over the relationship between double entry bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism.
The regulatory history of asset valuation in Germany is the focus of attention by Hoffman and Detzen, who examine relevant regulatory developments from the fifteenth century to 1986, when the Fourth Directive of the European Economic Community was implemented. The authors relate regulatory changes to various social, political and economic developments. They found that accounting requirements often became more restrictive following economic crises, which typically resulted in accounting regulation being portrayed as inadequate and requiring strengthening.
Accounting valuations in nineteenth-century French bankruptcies are the focus of investigation by Labardin. The study is concerned with accounting valuation practices following the enactment of the Law of 1838 and is based on the examination of 500 files in the archives of the Paris Court of Commerce. The author illuminates the self-interest of the agents – the bankrupt, the receiver and the creditors – as evident in accounting valuation practices.
Leardini and Rossi examine the interplay of accounting and religion in the case of the Santa Maria della Scala monastery in Verona (Italy) during the Middle Ages, specifically between 1340 and 1492. The authors focus on how accounting may have supported the domination structure and facilitated power relations within the organization. Using primary and secondary sources, the authors confirm that accounting played a key role in reinforcing both hierarchical and horizontal power relations among friars.