Description:
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.