Administrative and accounting practices in the Byzantine Empire

Abstract

There are three primary objectives for this article. The first is to describe the administrative and accounting practices of the Byzantine Empire during the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries CE. A survey of the specialized accounting history journals reveals that there have been no previous studies focusing on the Byzantine Empire, even though this empire was the dominant political, economic and military power in the European world in the early Middle Ages. The second objective is to contribute to the body of accounting history research which seeks to demonstrate that ancient civilizations possessed well developed accounting practices. It is argued that the accounting practices of the Byzantine Empire during the fourth through sixth centuries were sufficiently well developed to serve the administrative needs of a vast empire extending over a territory throughout the Mediterranean world and most of southern Europe. The third objective is to examine whether the concept of “governmentality”, which has been extensively used in accounting history research in recent years, might be applied to research focusing on ancient civilizations such as the Byzantine Empire.