Reviewed by Prof. A. Amaduzzi and Prof. G. Cavazzoni
Italy is the country in which modern accounting originated, and in common with other European countries it possesses an immense wealth of written sources, which are indispensable for reconstructing the history of accounting from Medieval times to the present. However historical research in accounting has only recently been accorded its due status in Italy.
There are a number of factors that have both led to and accelerated the revival and development of accounting and business history research in Italy in recent years. Firstly, the need has arisen to rethink the past and to pause for reflection, after many years of scientific research oriented only to the present and future and to specialisation withoul any continuity with the past. Secondly, the establishment in Pisa in 1984 of the Societd Italiana di Storia della Ragioneria, with the support of the international community, has brought together scholars with the common aim of continuing the historical studies which flourished briefly in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century.
In addition, in 1993, with important changes to the law governing the teaching of economic science in universities, both accounting history and comparative accounting have become recognised areas of study and are slowly entering the curriculum, with courses of 60 or 35 hours giving credits according to the options chosen by students on various diploma or degree courses.
At present, in Italy, the following areas of research can be identified: the history of accounting which has as its aim the study of the evolution of accounting as a means of recording transactions; business history including the history of firms and organisations of various types; history of accounting and economic thought—a particularly rich area of study in Italy in the last 150 years; and finally the history of the profession. Such classification however, as made clear in the Manifesto delta Societa Italiana della Storia della Ragioneria published in 1994 do not represent mutually separate fields, but are closely interconnected. In particular the history of accounting and the history of firms and organisation represent a single core of research since the interpretation of the numerical records is an indispensable prerequisite for understanding, with due level of accuracy, the processes and the activities of business whether near or remote in time. Furthermore the history of accounting thought overlaps with the history of accounting when the latter does not merely limit itself to the study and interpretation of methods of recordkeeping but sees in these methods the instruments and means by which to understand the cycles of prosperity and the lives of men under particular economic systems, as well as the relationship that always exists between accounting theory and theories of economics and enterprise.
In the field of accounting, publications dealing with history first appeared in 1869 with a brief essay entitled Origini storiche della professione di ragionere b}/ Ernesto Luchini and continued in the work of one of the great Italian thinkers, Fabio Besta (18451922) and his pupil Gino Zappa (18791960). With Fabio Besta, a golden age in the study of accounting history began. In 1894 the Societa Storica Lombarda offered a prize for a work on accounting history; this was won by Plinio Bariola and led to the publication of several important, methodical works.
In the twentieth century, after these first steps towards establishing the discipline, the history of Italian accounting and accountants was included alongside the curriculum in university accounting courses. Authors of textbooks for courses on accounting and financial accounting devoted several chapters to history. However it is not until the middle of the twentieth century that we see major comprehensive works published again in Italy.
In 1950 Federigo Melis published a seminal work on the history of accounting covering the subject from the ancient up to the early twentieth century in 900 pages rich in analysis and information. In 1952 Tommaso Zerbi published a volume entitled Origini della partita doppia which is now a classic of accounting history for the period prior to the Summa of Luca Pacioli.
Among the most important scholars of accounting history Tito Antoni, the first to hold a chair in accounting, must also be remembered for his works on ancient and modern history; Carlo Antinori who teaches at the University of Parma; and Luigi Serra who teaches at Cassino—a meticulous scholar who has published among other things an essay on Angelo Pietra, the sixteenth century monk and scholar who was the most important successor to Luca Pacioli.
In addition to the above, many studies have been produced during the twentieth century, which adopt a primarily biographical approach and investigate in depth the life and works of individual scholars, setting them in the context of their time and sphere of activity. These works constitute a great resource for the building of a comprehensive history of Italian accounting and accountants, including comparison with other countries.
It is well known that Italy is one of the countries that possesses the greatest quantity of surviving written records, early accounting documents and works essential to historic research, from the publication of Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportione et proportional! ta in Venice in 1494 onwards.
For this reason the rediscovery and ordering of such sources, such as was done at the end of the nineteenth century by Giuseppe Cerboni, is now under way as a joint project by the members of the Societd Italiana di Storia della Ragioneria at Pisa supported by the Consiglio Nazionale del Ragionieri at Rome.
Against this background the Biblioteca Storica di Ragioneria ed Economia Aziendale may be seen. The Biblioteca was conceived and is edited by Antonio Amaduzzi and consists of numbered editions with reprints of works which are little known or no longer readily available. At the time of writing, nine volumes have been published , the first in 1987.
The publication of the first volume represented the start of a series of commentaries on the origins of economia aziendale—a branch of knowledge which is evolving rapidly. Returning to the roots of the discipline, which had become small pieces in a vast jigsaw, gives a reference point for our present evolution , as outlined in the introduction to the series.
This is also reflected in the selection of the first work presented, the inaugural lecture for the academic year 18801881 at the R. Scuola Superiore di Commercio in Venezia, Besta’s La
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Ragioneria. This choice was motivated by the desire to draw attention to the “minor” works of Besta, as a reminder to those who were already aware of them or to allow others to discover them for the first time and thereby enrich their knowledge.
The characteristic common to all works in the series is the publication of the text together with an introduction which summarises the contents and gives comments and reflections. These introductions have been written by the editor himself or other researchers with particular interest in this field.
The second volume contains Giuseppe Cerboni’s Elenco Cronologico delle opere di Computisteria e Ragioneria venute alia luce in Italia dal 1202 sino al 1888. In its introduction it is underlined how a careful reading of history made possible by Cerboni’s work enables us establish that ragioneria was the forerunner of economia aziendale and that the relationship between the two can today be seen as one of interindependence.
The third volume comprises the eleventh book of Pacioli’ Summa edited by Vincenzo Gitti. The work is dedicated to Ernesto Lodovico Jager who translated the Summa into “the language of Goethe” and to whom a debt is owed, as the translator of Pacioli, Manzoni and Pietra—the first proponents of the new science.
The fourth work included in the series is Plinio Bariola’s Storia della Ragioneria Italiana, published in 1897. Described in the preface as a comprehensive history from its beginning to the end of the nineteenth century. This constitutes a source of invaluable information for the understanding of the history of accounting thought and of its protagonists, of the unfolding of accounting as the discipline underpinning economic control, in which are to be found the seeds of the more fully developed twentieth century theories of economia aziendale.
The fifth volume is dedicated to Giovanni Germani’s La ragioneria come scienza moderna, which first appeared in 1913 at the centenary celebrations of the Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale. The introduction by Gilberto Mazza recalls the fierce competitiveness of Germani who, drawing support from foreign scholarship and his own personal ideas, did not spare any of his illustrious rivals including one of the stature of Besta. That Germani’s work was subsequently “forgotten” in academic circles can be attributed to his attitude. As well as summarising the ideas put forward in the Ragioneria come scienza moderna—a work which Germani himself recognised as being audacious in content—Mazza recalls the severe criticism levelled by Germani at Cerboni whom he accused of having placed the discipline outside any verifiable scientific understanding, at Besta who had provided a “limited understanding of the purpose of accounting”, at Luigi Brasca, at Giovanni Rossi, and above all at Leon Gomberg. Concerning Gomberg, Mazza believes that Germani had lost all sense of measure and had underestimated his complex theoretical system which is broadly comparable to our present day economia aziendale (as can be judged from the eighth volume in the series, on Gomberg’s work, and the introductory essay by Rosella Ferraris Franceschi).
The sixth volume deals with the Storia della Ragioneria Italiana by Ernesto Lucchini. Giuseppe Bruni, who has written the introduction, first recalls the “noticeable progress” made in business economic theory in the nineteenth century—that is, the century of the industrial revolution and the advent of capitalism—at the end of which Lucchini’s work was published. He then describes the “broad sweep” of the work, which starts from the eastern and middle eastern civilisations, proceeds to the ancient Greeks and Romans and then works through the Middle ages up to modern times, noting how the use of accounting had sustained, if not directly given rise to, the emergence of the banking and trading empires of Genoa, Venice and Florence which were the precursors of the Italian renaissance. In drawing conclusions on the work, Bruni emphasises that the book is a good example of Lucchini’s work, which without grand scientific pretensions nevertheless makes a considerable contribution Lo the understanding of Italian accounting history up to the end of the last century.
The seventh book, Luca Paciolo nella storia della ragioneria by Vincenzo Vianello, dated 1896, may be considered together with the third: Gitti’s Trattato. Amaduzzi’s introduction discusses the dual aim of Vianello’s work, which both deepens the knowledge of Pacioli as an historical figure and of his treatise and its place in the field of accounting history. It also sheds light on Vianello himself—a scholar living at the turn of the twentieth century, author of many publications which form part of the most traditional areas of accounting history, but in which one feels the wind of change blowing towards the most modern ideas of economia aziendale.
The work of Leon Gomberg, mentioned above, is to be found in the eight volume, entitled L’economologique (science comptable) et son histoire. Here, in his introduction, Amaduzzi notes the importance of the work, which offers a rich source of ideas to students of accounting history who wish to look outside Italy. There then follows an essay by Rosella Ferraris Franceschi. In this essay, after having analysed Gomberg’s work, she discusses a theoretical system proposed for business economics: the three areas into which Einzelwirtschaftslehre may be divided, that is the technical aspect, the theories of organisation and administration of economic activities, and finally accounting—Verrechnungswissenschaft. The final part of the essay deals with the last of these three areas, Economologique, Ragioneria or Verrechnungswissenschaft, and here Franceschi seeks to outline Gomberg’s contribution to the evolution of accounting and economia aziendale, as a scholar who recognised both the need for change and the weight of tradition.
The ninth volume contains the essay published in 1938 by Angelo Riera on Pacioli’s Tractatus de Computis el: Scripturis. This, taken together with other works in the series offers a further contribution to the understanding of Pacioli’s accounting treatise. The essay was recently reissued in memory of Professor Riera with an introduction by Gianfranco Cavazzoni. The introduction consists of two parts, the first dealing with Pacioli’s life and writings, and the second giving an analysis of Riera’s original essay, including the question of the attribution of the invention of double entry bookkeeping. Here it is found that Riera seems to accord to modern critics who attribute the invention of double entry to “no one”, it being considered the outcome of a gradual development which evolved to satisfy the needs of enterprise.
