ABSTRACT
French speaking authors assumed an eminent position in accounting between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Such famous names as Jacques Savary, Mathieu de la Porte, Edmond Degrange Sr, Anselm Payen, Eugène Léautey and Adolphe Guilbault (1889), and many others are engraved in the annals of accounting history (cf. Colasse 2005). This tradition continued during the first half of the twentieth century (the ‘Belle Époque’ of the interwar period), though less prominently, and despite a greater volume of publications. The five major topics occupying accounting research during this period in the French language were: (i) accounting history; (ii) financial accounting theory, including commercial and industrial applications, taxation issues and education; (iii) the assimilation and adaptation of cost accounting and managerial control as developed in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States; (iv) the need for price-level adjustments during the post-war inflation of the late 1920s; and (v) the construction of charts of accounts and legislations for uniform master charts, as well as creating associations of public accounting (including auditing).
