Pacioli and Medieval Accounting History – Lost in Translation; Alan Sangster and Fabio Santini
Channel: Alan Sangster
Date: 2021-03-11

THIS VIDEO IS BEST WATCHED WITH SUBTITLES TURNED-ON
Medieval accounting history has virtually stood still for 100 years. Where economic history re-invented itself in the last 1920s, abandoning a Darwinistic approach to history, accounting history did not. Accounting history still adopts the same Darwinistic approach to its medieval history as it did then. It is Whiggish, teleological, and extremely resistant to any attempt to reopen the old debates. They are viewed as closed. What was written 100 years ago is viewed as correct. 

This video presents a study of the first chapter of Luca Pacioli's seminal De computis et scripturis. This is the treatise published in print in 1494 that is revered as the catalyst for the adoption of the double entry bookkeeping system in use around the world today. Many view it as one of the most influential works ever published. 

We demonstrate that accounting historians do not understand the nature of this document. 

It is far more than the accounting history literature would have anyone believe. It was also written for a specific audience, the wholesale merchants of Venice. A group that ran the city. The patrician class in a city that had no need for a merchant guild because the city was the guild.