SOME SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DOUBLE-ENTRY LEDGERS.
Abstract The article presents the results of an examination, from the point of view of accounting technique, of the double-entry ledgers of six individuals and one partnership, ranging in time from 1665 to 1774. The records examined are not in any way a representative selection. It has confined largely to the scope of the accounts and to a group of related questions concerning balancing, profit calculation and the statement of asset values. These topics are perhaps the most interesting for practitioners of accounting, and concern matters which are relevant for the use of past account-books as source material by economic and business historians. Though almost every one of the individual practices and procedures in these ledgers is mentioned in one or other of the large number of contemporary treatises on accounting, the ledgers disclose a greater diversity than one would have expected from an examination of the treatises, which tends to produce a more clearly defined picture of a modal pattern. It is possible, of course, that the exanimation of further examples of surviving ledgers may reveal a similar modal pattern.
- DOI
- 10.2308/tar-7057778
- Volume
- 34 (4)
- Pages
- 534-546
- Language
- en
- Export
- BibTeX
- Sources
- openalex crossref