ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the synopsis of the ways in which accounting historians have studied the complex interplay between accounting, race and ethnicity. It also explains the conceptual distinctiveness between race and ethnicity. The chapter addresses the narrowness of the field of inquiry of race and ethnicity in accounting and points to three shifts of focus which might yield fruitful research outcomes and so enhance accounting history's contribution to the wider study of race and ethnicity. Initially confined to the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and history, current interest in race and ethnicity has extended to social geography, political science, political economy, social psychology, language studies, cultural studies, philosophy and archaeology. Indeed, it can be argued that for all of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, the prevailing Social Darwinist concept of race rendered history quite irrelevant to the subject.
