IntroductionWhyStudyAccountingHistory.docVIP

Introduction: Why Study Accounting History? ? Unlike most other modern professions, accounting has a history which is usually discussed in terms of one seminal event, the invention and dissemination of the double-entry bookkeeping processes. But a view of accounting history that looks first at Luca Pacioli overlooks a long evolution of accounting systems in ancient and medieval times.????More fundamentally, why should we care about the history of accounting at all? Certainly a glimpse back in this area helps illuminate our past generally, and it is the sort of winding, twisted path that makes an entertaining story. Perhaps the most compelling reason, however, is to help explain the phenomenal growth that the profession of accountancy has enjoyed worldwide since the first royal charters were granted to the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh less than 150 years ago.????In 1904, fifty years after the emergence of the formal profession as chartered accountants, about six thousand practitioners carried this title. In 1957, there were 38,690 chartered and incorporated accountants (Scottish, British and Irish). Today, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales alone has a membership of over 109,000 worldwide. This is to say nothing of the many professionals in the other allied institutes in Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Scotland and South Africa, and American certified public accountants - comprising a vast worldwide network of professional accountancy dominated by several mammoth worldwide accounting firms. ????How and why did this relatively new profession develop? Its history is that of human commerce, and even more fundamentally, of writing and the use of numbers and counting.????Some argue that accounting developed purely in response to the needs of the time brought about by changes in the environment and societal demands. Others claim that the development of the science of accounting has itself driven the evolution of commerce, since