The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how Italian-language accounting history was one example of a “local” accounting discipline. For this purpose, we reviewed all historical publications edited from 1869 to 2008 and conducted an in-depth analysis on the database we built. Evidence about authorships, dates of publication, publication forms, periods of study, issues and approaches, were collected. The results show many changes in the publishing patterns of accounting history research. We also explore how the schools of accounting thought, the assessment of historical research in the recruitment system, the stimuli and opportunities coming from the Italian Society of Accounting History, the role of practitioners in conducting and financing research about the origin of their profession could have influenced authorship, publication forms, and the issues and themes during the century and a half after the Unification of Italy.

The aim of this article is to describe the role played by accounting in an industrial company in which elements of utopian socialism and capitalism co-existed. The case is the Royal Silk Factory founded by King Ferdinand IV at San Leucio, near Caserta in 1778. The article covers the years 1802–1826. In this hybrid institution, double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) was adopted to calculate the minimum profit rate owed to the capitalist shareholders, while ‘labour accounting’ measured the workers’ performance. The surplus value was shared between the enterprise and the workers. This article makes a number of contributions to the accounting history literature: First, it adds archival evidence of accounting practices in Italian industrial companies; second, it supports the close connection between DEB and capitalism; third, it shows that the accounting system is set up to reflect the different social organisation of a manufacturing company; and finally, it illustrates how the accounting system makes the wealth-generating and wealth-distributing processes accountabl

This paper details the preparation, structure, uses and availability of a database (known as Summa DB) which collects and codifies many aspects of the accounting history literature contributed by Italian authors. There are a total of 1,253 units of analysis: 1,197 Italian language publications printed from 1861 to 2010, and 56 international articles and books printed from 1976 to 2010. For each publication, the data collected includes the date and type of publication, the period studied, the accounting history field, sources of data, the affiliations of the authors, and the accounting methods examined. The aim of this paper is to show how\ud Summa DB can provide researchers with multidimensional data which can assist in solving some problems emerging from applying the “Comparative International Accounting History” (CIAH) perspective

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Informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality, the paper focuses on nineteenthcentury General Commissariat for the Railroad Industry in the Papal State. Unlike in liberal States, where government intervention in the affairs of railway companies was limited, the pressing need to reinforce the Pope's pastoral power, strengthen the bond between the believers and the Holy See and ensure equity and the efficiency of the new infrastructure meant that the Commissariat acted as a governmental centre of calculation. Accounting technologies in the form of budgets, cost accounting systems and penetrating audits enabled the government to intervene in the operations of private railway companies. The study analyses the role of accounting and auditing practices in the pursuit of non-liberal goals in an industry which is traditionally perceived as critical to the development of a liberal economy, one in which accounting was traditionally used to maintain investors' confidence in the capitalist system.