Adam Smith Business School

Professor Alan Sangster, University of Aberdeen

"The trees, not the forest: Sombart, Yamey, double entry, capitalism, and capitalists in late-medieval northern Italy."
Wednesday, 12 April. 1 pm
Wards Library

Abstract

This paper revisits the Sombart debate concerning the link between double-entry bookkeeping and the emergence of modern capitalism. It presents the case for this connection by Werner Sombart and other economic historians of the early 20th century and the contrasting views on this literature of Basil Yamey, published in a series of articles between 1949 and 2005. All they theorised about this topic concerns the early modern period from 1500 to 1800. The economic historians considered and dismissed anything earlier, and Yamey ignored it. In contrast, this paper focuses on the period they dismissed, investigating the same issues as they did, but applied to northern Italian wholesale merchants and wholesale merchant bankers between 1100 and 1500. It concludes that they were the early capitalists sought by Sombart and his fellow economic historians and that they were correct in their conclusions concerning double entry playing a major role in the establishment of modern capitalism, but for the wrong reasons.

Bio

Alan Sangster is a Professor of Accounting History at the University of Aberdeen and is the 2022 American Accounting Association Outstanding Accounting Educator – its highest award – and its first European winner in its 50-year existence.

He has published 82 papers (28 sole-authored) in journals including The Accounting Review, AAAJ, BAR, Abacus, JBFA, JIT, JMAR, Business History, & Issues in Accounting Education. Of these, 34 are in accounting history, 27 in accounting education, 14 in accounting systems, and 5 in management accounting, as well as 19 book chapters (13 sole-authored), three extended review essays, four research-based books (3 sole-authored); and 25 invited keynote addresses, 16 in history and 9 in education.

He was the 2021 winner of the Barbara D. Marino award for Excellence in Accounting History Publication from the Accounting History section of the AAA; joint winner of the 2021 Outstanding Accounting Education award of the Teaching, Learning and Curriculum section of the AAA; received the 2015 Hourglass Award of the Academy of Accounting Historians; was 2014 joint winner of the Premio Enrique Fernández Peña de Historia de la Contabilidad from The Spanish Association of Accounting and Business Administration (AECA); received the BAFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012; was presented with the ‘Outstanding Contribution to Accounting Education Award’ of the BAFA Accounting Education SIG in 2009; the Excellence in Teaching Innovation Award from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland in 1997; and the Outstanding Educator Award from the AI /Expert Systems section of the AAA in 1995.

He has been the Editor of Accounting Education since 2012 and, for ten years from 1992, was Editor-in-Chief and founding editor of the International Journal of Applied Expert Systems. He founded and was the first chair of the BAFA Accounting History SIG in 2018. He is a past Chair of both the BAA Accounting Education SIG and the AI/Expert Systems section of the AAA.

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For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 2 March 2023