ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of accounting for management purposes by owners and occupiers of land wishing to make the most effective use of that resource. Some attention is given to relevant events during the late Middle Ages which Dyer (2005; see also Britnell 1993 christens ‘The age of transition’. There, Dyer (2005: 245) studies the transition from medieval to modern times, or from feudalism to capitalism, and presents compelling evidence of the beginnings of an agricultural-based market economy with a particular impetus occurring after 1400 when ‘the aristocracy were weakened by their loss of direct management of agriculture, and let the economic initiative pass to their social inferiors’. This provided a welcome opportunity for upward social and economic mobility with the ‘farmers who managed the largest units of production … often recruited from the upper ranks of the peasantry’ (Dyer 2005: 245; see also Britnell 1993: 201).
