Histories of accounting

education – an introduction

The sub-discipline of accounting education is often traced back to the advent of accounting as a modern
profession during the mid-nineteenth century, with education being a key part of the accountancy
professionalisation project (Willmott, 1986). Yet, before the words ‘accounting’ and ‘accountancy’
became widely used, earlier forms of accounting, sometimes called ‘reckoning’ and often associated
with merchants’ accounts, were used and book-keeping education can be regarded as a forerunner to
accounting education (Parker, 1994).

Edwards (2011) examines accounting education in Britain in the early modern period (1550–1800) at the
time of rapid commercial expansion and early industrialisation. He notes, ‘Education is not yet the
subject of significant study by accounting historians’ (Edwards, 2011: 37).

As Sangster (2015) shows, historians of the origins of modern accounting have generally
accepted that the earliest known instructional treatise on double-entry bookkeeping was
published by Luca Pacioli in 1494. Sangster et al. (2008) interpret this work as a manual for
small businessmen to learn how to keep accounts. Sangster (2015) presents detailed evidence of
an earlier bookkeeping manual from 1475 by Marino de Raphaeli which he describes as the
earliest known instructional treatise on double-entry bookkeeping, a work that provides
fascinating insights into how bookkeeping was taught in fifteenth-century Venice. As Sangster
(2015: 31) states,

Since the publication of the new series of Accounting History commencing in 1996, the journal has
published a range of contributions on the history of accounting education.