Reviewed by Patti A. Mills Indiana State University
One factor retarding the integration of accounting history into the accounting curriculum at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is the short supply of appropriate texts and other materials conveniently packaged for classroom use. Ideally, such material would incorporate background information on the topic or period under consideration, reproductions or transcriptions of original source documents, commentary on the sources, and suggestions for further reading or archival work. Although not the stated intention of its authors Yamey, Edey and Thomson, this welcome reprint from Garland Publishing could be used as such a text in addition to serving its ostensible purpose as a foundation for further research. The book consists of four major parts:
I. Extracts from books on accounting dating from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. II. An essay that surveys books on accounting in English from the same period.
III. An essay on the practice of double-entry accounting in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
IV. A bibliography of books on accounting in English from the period 1543-1800.
It is the rare combination of primary, secondary and biblio-graphic source material between the same two covers that makes this book so potentially valuable for both teaching and research. In addition to a balanced combination of materials, the text itself is well prepared. The authors chose the extracts thoughtfully to demonstrate the variety of topics considered in the early accounting treatises. Careful editing has enhanced the readability of the passages while preserving the original sense of the language. The essays are also well crafted. They represent in a suitably distilled form Yamey’s work on early accounting thought and practice in Britain, and their inclusion helps to set the primary source material in context.
The book is illustrated by a series of 16 plates which reproduce actual pages of early journals, ledgers and accounting treatises. While the inclusion of this type of illustration is highly desirable, the authors would have increased the value of the material by providing transcriptions of the plates and some specific comment on their content.
From a purely research perspective, the book when origi-nally published in 1963 added nothing new to Yamey’s already prodigious body of research findings on early British accounting history. It did, however, present a portion of them in a conveniently summarized form which, with its excellent bibliography, continues to make the work a starting point for further research in the area.
For those scholars wishing to develop a research interest in early-modern or British accounting history, the book is best read in conjunction with James Ole Winjum’s The Role of Accounting in the Economic Development of England: 1500-1750 (Urbana, Illinois: Center for International Education and Research in Accounting, 1972). It is particularly important to compare their discussion of the relationship between theory and practice. Like Yamey, Edey and Thomason, one of Winjum’s major contributions is to survey the most significant early works on accounting in English and to relate them to accounting practice during the period. Based on their examination of account books from the second half of the seventeenth century and later, Yamey et. al. concluded that “the early treatises are a realible mirror of contemporary practice” (p. vii). While Winjum agrees with this finding for the late seventeenth century and beyond, he demonstrates convincingly, using earlier accounting records, that literature was in advance of practice in England until the eighteenth century.
