Revisiting the birth of industrial accounting in France, a return to the actors involved

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study returns to earlier investigations of cost accounting in French enterprises. It has been demonstrated that apart from a few exceptions, industrial accounting was established later in France than in Great Britain, mirroring the lag which one observes with respect to industrialisation. Our objective is to examine the points during which these changes took place, in pre-existing enterprises or in new ones, and to explore more deeply how and why these changes occurred. Various explanatory factors can be considered, but it is above all the actors involved in these changes and their personal trajectories on which the emphasis is placed in this study. In this period of transition, before double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) had been diffused more broadly, or even generally adopted, accounting innovation in industry frequently seemed to have been carried out by individuals who shared trade in common, and lived or had lived in regions where DEB had long been practised compared to elsewhere. Taking the geographic dimension into account argues for a comparative history of accounting that not only juxtaposes parallel stories, from one side or the other of the current borders of nation-states, but rather delves more deeply into a level of analysis that concerns itself with the spatial circulation of accounting techniques and their imprints over the longue durée.