ABSTRACT
This paper examines three accounting documents that have been preserved from records kept for a brewery built at Louisbourg, Canada, in 1759. As one of the earliest examples of English accounting in Canada, these documents provide insight into 18th century business practices in the North American colonies. Considering accounting texts of the period and documents preserved from businesses in the thirteen colonies, the study concludes that the statements prepared for the brewery were sophisticated in comparison to the accounting practices of this era.
Résumé. Les auteurs examinent trois documents comptables tires des registres d’une brasserie établie à Louisbourg, au Canada, en 1759. Ces documents, parmi les plus anciens specimens de comptabilité anglaise au Canada, nous renseignent sur les méthodes comptables des colonies nord-américaines du XVIIIe siècle. Compte tenu des ouvrages comptables du temps et des documents produits par les entreprises des treize colonies et qui ont été conserves, les auteurs concluem que les états dresses pour la brasserie sont d’une complexité qui tranche sur les méthodes comptables de l’époque.
Canadian historians have not generally used the term historical manuscript to include the records of business concerns and the private papers of businessmen. Historians in Canada, especially those who wrote in the nineteenth century, were preoccupied with political history. This has been Canada’s loss, for business records are part of the history of this country, and the failure to appreciate this truth led inevitably to the neglect of the resource. ... No one, however, can adequately describe the role of business in Canada’s history without access to business records. (Archer, 1972, pp. 288, 290)
