- Title
- Humans as cost objects: 18th century Portuguese slave trading
- Creator
- West, Brian; Pinto, Ofelia
- Date
- 2013
- Type
- Text; Conference paper
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/56017
- Identifier
- vital:5896
- Abstract
- Based on extensive archival research, the cost accounting techniques that were developed and applied by the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão for the purpose of trading in human beings (slaves) in the second half of the 18th century are documented and analysed. It is shown that the company developed a sophisticated costing system that has parallels to many of the techniques of costing in use today: the distinction between direct and indirect costs, the allocation of overhead costs and the reallocation of costs associated with “normal spoilage”. Located within a growing literature that documents accounting’s “dark side”, and informed by the theoretical concept of “action at a distance”, this research demonstrates how accounting techniques were fundamental to enabling the reprehensible episode of human misery that slave trading constituted.
- Publisher
- Newcastle, Australia Newcastle University Business School
- Relation
- 13th World Congress of Accounting Historians. Newcastle Upon Tyne. 17-19 July, 2012
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
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