Accounting and the history of the everyday life of captains, sailors and common seamen in eighteenth-century Portuguese slave trading
- Authors: Pinto, Ofelia , West, Brian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting History Vol. 22, no. 3 (2017), p. 320-347
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This archive-based case study uses accounting and related records to uncover details of the everyday life of the captains, sailors and seamen who manned the ships that allowed Portuguese slave trading to flourish during the eighteenth century. By elaborating the lives of the crews of the ships of the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão, a Portuguese chartered company created in 1755 for the express purpose of slave trading, the study contributes to a growing body of literature that uses accounting documents as a source of social history and enables previously silent voices to be heard. Furthermore, the study brings together two notions which have previously remained separated in the accounting history literature: the everyday lives of participants within the setting of a ‘dark’ episode of human history. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
Accounting, slavery and social history : The legacy of an eighteenth-century Portuguese chartered company
- Authors: Pinto, Ofelia , West, Brian
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting History Vol. 22, no. 2 (2017), p. 141-166
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Based on extensive archival research, this study documents and analyses the accounting techniques that the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão applied to its slave trading operations during the second half of the eighteenth century. The surviving accounting records of this Portuguese chartered company reveal – in meticulous detail – the integral role that accounting technology played in enabling the slave trade to flourish. However, and paradoxically, while evidencing this culpability the same accounting records also document the essential humanity of the slaves and preserve details of the bleak circumstances of their existence. Slaves are typically lamented as a lost people consigned to a tragic and an eternal anonymity, but it is from accounting records that many aspects of their lives can be reconstructed. In this way, the accounting records studied are also shown to provide a latent source of social history that constitutes a profound mea culpa. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
Enhancing the accessibility of accounting and business archives: The role of technology in informing research in accounting and business
- Authors: Cobbin, Phillip , Dean, Graeme , Esslemont, Cameron , Ferguson, Patrick , Keneley, Monica , Potter, Brad , West, Brian
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Abacus-a Journal of Accounting Finance and Business Studies Vol. 49, no. 3 (September 2013), p. 396-422
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The application of advanced digitization technologies to accounting and business archives has created new opportunities for accounting and business historians. The joint American Accounting Association and European Accounting Association Task Force (2006-2010) that examined digitization confirmed this. This paper explores these opportunities, along with some attendant challenges and cautions, with reference to the digitization of two significant archives located in Australia. The first is the archive of CPA Australia, a professional accounting association that has its beginnings in 1886 and which today has over 132,000 members. The second is the archive accumulated by the pre-eminent accounting scholar Raymond Chambers during his long and extraordinarily productive tenure at the University of Sydney. Studies of surviving business records, biography and institutional history provide examples of scholarship that is enabled by digitization technology and which has the capacity to inform contemporary issues and debates.
- Description: C1
Does accounting history matter?
- Authors: Gomes, Delfina , Carnegie, Garry , Napier, Christopher , Parker, Lee , West, Brian
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting History Vol. 16, no. 4 (2011), p. 389-402
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Building upon panel discussion held at the sixth Accounting History International Conference, a resounding "yes" is offered in response to the question of whether accounting history matters. However, reflecting the viewpoint that accounting history can and should matter more, various suggestions are presented for advancing the quality, relevance and significance of historical research in accounting, commencing with the need to redress persistent misconceptions about the discipline. Practical strategies for enhancing the impact of accounting history scholarship are then developed around the themes of promoting its contemporary relevance and implications, fostering engagement with diverse groups of scholars, writing accounting history in informative and engaging ways, and articulating and developing appropriate methodologies. Finally, the role of accounting historians as "change agents" is explored and advocated. © The Author(s) 2011.
Accounting professionalisation and occupational context: The role of the public accounting profession in China
- Authors: Yee, Helen , West, Brian
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: 6th Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting Conference: Interdisciplinary Research in Accounting (APIRA 2010) p. 1-28
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: While applied broadly within the setting of accounting and some other occupations, ‘profession’ is a particularly Western concept with peculiarly British origins. However, the significance of such status and the process by which it is acquired has defied precise explication. Examination of the sociology of the accounting occupation within non- Western locations can contribute to exposing and clarifying these problematic and contingent aspects of occupational stratification, as well as assist in redressing the bias towards English-speaking and European countries within the accounting history literature. Proceeding from these theoretical premises, a historical study of the accounting occupation within China is undertaken. Integrating episodes from this country into the broader historical narrative of the professionalisation of accounting reinforces – often vividly – that accountants’ work status is not bound to an innate and predetermined trajectory. Rather, the variety of localised and time-specific variables which constitute the occupational context are shown to exert a dominating influence.
Understanding the dynamics of the Australian accounting profession : A prosopographical study of the founding members of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria, 1886 to 1908
- Authors: Carnegie, Garry , Edwards, John , West, Brian
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal Vol. 16, no. 5 (2003), p. 790-820
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Numerous studies have examined the institutional setting of accounting as a professional occupation. However, institutional deeds and outcomes derive from the behaviour of individual actors, particularly those key players who drive the creation, policy development and outlook of practitioner associations. Recognising this, and in search of a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of professional formation, this study applies the prosopographical method of inquiry to accounting development in Australia during the period 1886 to 1908. Motives and actions are identified with the founding members of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants, Victoria, during this formative era, which saw key personalities transfer their allegiance to the Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants. The beliefs, preferences and ambitions of individual participants are shown to exert significant influence over the process of professional formation, highlighting the capacity of prosopographical studies to augment the predominantly vocational and institutional focus of the prior sociology of professions literature.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000616