ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on the development of accounting history as a body of knowledge and reviews issues relating to the historical craft, such as the nature of evidence, how the accounting historian draws conclusions from evidence, the role of theory in historical accounting research, and how accounting history is communicated – the centrality of narrative and the possibility of other modes of history-writing. The word ‘historiography’ is understood by historians in two senses. The sense relates to the body of literature about a particular period, location or topic. Since the 1970s, there have been several attempts to clarify the nature and purposes of accounting history. Instead of the ‘traditional’/‘new’ dichotomy, it may be more helpful to separate historical accounting research into two other strands. The strands of historical accounting research should be mutually supportive, if we accept that accounting is shaped by its environment but also feeds back into shaping the world in which it operates.
