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Habilitation last update: November 2002 |
Franz-Josef Arlinghaus Zwischen
Notiz und Bilanz |
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(Translation by Marita Kewe) In the 14th century, methods of accounting were
developed in Italy which today still form the basis of modern accountancy.
This being itself reason enough for the mediaevalist to deal with that topic,
the view of Sociologist Werner Sombart that the method of double-entry
bookkeeping and the capitalist economic system are to be considered
inseparable has led to intense research work about the account books of the
late Middle Ages. It was above all Federigo Melis who - like Sombart -
believed that double-entry bookkeeping can already be found in early ‘capitalist’
enterprises in the Tuscany in the last decades of the 13th century. Basil
Selig Yamey has however shown that for the big Italian trading companies of
the 14th and 15th century it was of minor importance which method of keeping
account books was applied. The way in which double-entry bookkeeping was used
in the Middle Ages hardly appears to be superior to single-entry bookkeeping
with regard to its function of providing information for business decisions. It has to be considered that, though very complex techniques of bookkeeping have been developed in late medieval Italy which today are still of fundamental importance, ‘modern’ functions of bookkeeping - for instance getting quick and reliable information about profits and losses - can only to a very limited extent be referred to as the incentives to develop these techniques. In what way were these elaborate forms of accounting established and what were the motives for producing them? In view of this state of research, the present study
deliberately disregards more complex presuppositions concerning the probable
or actual incentives to develop refined techniques of bookkeeping. In a first
approach the account books are only considered as a memo for business
transactions without further assumptions about the intended purpose of these
data. If the problem is approached in this way, the analysis must focus on
the method of storing and processing information - i.e. the way in which
business information is recorded and further treated. The state of research
and the approach chosen in this work lead to the following methodological
premises: 1st) The process of writing down business transactions is to be
examined in a broader cultural context. 2nd) Because the focus is on the
aspect of the treatment of information by means of writing, it is suggested
that this process be examined synchronously on the basis, if possible, of all
books of one trading company. 1st) In order to understand the structure of
the account books, it is necessary to illuminate the cultural context in
which the writing of these texts took place. Generally, it is possible to
assume that already in the 14th century, on account of their education, most
of the Italian merchants and their employees were able to read, write and do
written calculations. However, the use of account books was not yet part of
the school curricula; it was taught in the botteghe of the various compagnies.
Compared with the 15th century, the institutional consolidation of what is
understood by keeping account books was very small. Consequently, there was
the necessary scope for the evolutionary process in which the merchants could
find new solutions for specific problems and reject procedures that were less
suitable. If on the one hand latitude was thus given, which
favoured this specific stage characterized by ‘trial and error’
in the development of accounting, it is nevertheless on the other hand to be
noticed that, in the late Middle Ages, the method by which the merchants
wrote down their business transactions was strongly influenced by a specific
‘mediaeval’ use of writing generally and in the Italian communes
in particular. Both in the context of a very early use of writing - for
instance in the Babylonian Empire - as well as in its modern use, the tabular
form is chosen where it appears useful. In the high and late Middle Ages,
however, a general use of tables, the sense of which actually becomes clear
only if the numbers and terms on one page are spatially related, was limited
to a few fields only, as in calendar calculation. On close examination, the
bookings of the merchants, too, turned out to be complete sentences, which
were skilfully made up in a page split into three columns. and the accounts
can be regarded as texts, the sentences / bookings of which are in fact
combined with each other by conjunctions. That does not mean to say that the
businessmen were not able to draw up tables; these can indeed be found in the
written material of the merchants. That rather means that writing down
business transactions was strongly influenced by the way in which information
was usually put down in writing in the Middle Ages. 2nd) From the beginning of the 13th century,
the Italian trading companies used a more or less large number of business
books at the same time, which were interlocked with each other. If accounting
is considered to be a system in which data of business transactions are put
down in writing, each of the books set up is basically of equal importance
for the analysis. With regard to the approach chosen here, it is almost
possible to go as far as to postulate in reverse that the waste books, i.e.
the Ricordanze, and the Memoriali which are based upon them,
are of more interest than the ledgers. At the same time, the relationship
between one book and another is to examine, i.e. how and why entries of one
account book have been copied in another one. Apart from the discussion of
the motives which made the merchants set up the individual account book, the
focus of attention is given the function of a particular book in relation to
the other business books - with the former approach not excluding the latter
one. In this way only, accounting in late medieval Italy can be understood
and analysed as a form of treatment of information based on the use of
writing. Most works on accounting are diachronic studies of the development
of accounting based on fragments or individual account books from the 13th
and 14th century which were part of a complex system of accounting.
Considering what has been explained in this work so far, it is however
necessary to take a different approach. Instead of diachronically examining
books of different trading companies taken out of context, the function of
accounting is to be studied in a synchronic analysis of all business writings
if possible which a compagnia used during a relatively short period of
time. The trading company founded by Francesco Datini
together with Toro di Berto in Avignon in 1367 and wound up in 1373 can be considered
as the first enterprise of the Middle Ages of which (almost) all account
books - from the waste book up to the secret book - have survived. The
company's 35 account books in total, not kept on the double-entry system, can
be divided into eight different types. After a succinct analysis of the form
of the books and of the introductory comments, one representative of each
type of the different account books was to be examined in detail. If there
were within a group of account books variations of relevance compared to the
‘usual structure’ (as for instance was the case with the Memoriale),
these were taken into account. In total, 10 of these 35 books were analysed
in detail. The study was made with the aim of establishing the specific
function of each account book by examining the structure of the account
type(s) found in an account book as well as the structure of this book in
general, and, in particular, the relationship of the individual account book
to all the other books of the compagnia. For example, the libro di
entrata e uscita (book of income and expenditures) was primarily
designed not to know the cash in till, but to supervise the employees who
dealt with cash. Besides the assignation of specific functions to the various
types or groups of account books, the differences in continuity and
efficiency, as far the keeping of books was concerned, indicate that the
various functions which the merchants assigned to account books were of
different significance. The huge amount of 100,000 entries in total which
were recorded in the books belong to the accounts of the creditors and
especially of the debtors. The large number of liabilities to pay which the
customers owed the compagnia - and which were mostly caused by product
sales on credit (credit purchases) - had to be noted down so that no losses
of income resulted from forgetting a debt. The notes of the credit purchases
were first recorded in chronological order in the waste book. During the few
years of existence of the trading company, the businessmen completed five of
such waste books, each book containing about 600 pages. Because of the fact
that the merchant could not anticipate the customer who would enter his
shop/business next and buy a product on credit, the books could not be
structured in advance. In contrast to all the possibilities of electronic
data processing today, in those days the notes in an account book could not
be simply reorganized. Without reorganization, however, a ‘loss of
data’ - i.e. in this context loss of earnings - was very likely because
a) due to the large number, outstanding accounts somewhere between debt notes
already cancelled could be easily overlooked and b) it was hardly possible to
collect the entries belonging to one client in one attempt. The businessmen solved this problem caused by the
inflexibility of the medium mainly by going through their waste book at
regular intervals, copying the outstanding debts and liabilities - and only
those - in a second book, the Memoriale, and putting together all
notes regarding one person. Only by copying the information still relevant in
the Memoriale, data could be arranged in such a way that, basically, a
loss of information was no more to be feared. Nevertheless, it was not
sufficient to copy the debit entries just once. At long-term intervals, the
accounts of the Memoriale, too, had to be checked and in a concise
manner be recopied on a third level, in the ledger. It has to be emphasized
that the Memoriale and the ledger were not designed for the purpose of
providing a database that enabled the merchants to determine business success
of their enterprise. It has been shown that even the books at the
second and third level - like the waste book - primarily performed the
function of being a memory aid for outstanding debts and liabilities. If
bookkeeping was to fulfil this function, though, it was, in view of the
structure of the data to be recorded and the relative inflexibility of
the medium, not enough to make a note of a business transaction only once. It was necessary to compare the results of the
synchronic study with the surviving account books from the period before 1360
in a second stage in order that something about the diachronic development of
bookkeeping can be said on the basis of a synchronic analysis of the business
writings of the Datini/di Berto trading company. Even from a diachronic
perspective, the mnemonic function proved to be the chief purpose of early
accounting so that it has to be assumed that already in the 13th century the
merchants were forced to revise their notes. It is the main thesis of this study that, without
a change in the motives, numerous elementary methods of bookkeeping developed
in a process characterized by its inherent dynamics; the
‘bookkeeper’ himself hardly contributed his share by providing
comprehensive concepts. Instead he was forced to react to conditions to a
great extent, as they resulted from the specifics of the data which were to
be recorded and the high demands of the medium itself. The
‘invention’ of double-entry bookkeeping cannot be explained
completely by this model, but the gap which remains between bookkeeping,
which develops further by processes characterized by their inherent dynamics
and that cohesive double-entry system proves to be relatively small and to be
easily bridged. In the course of this process, mainly characterized
by its inherent dynamics, not only elaborate methods of bookkeeping were
adopted. Since the data which were to be revised were presented not in tabular
form, but as complete syntactic units, copying and regrouping the various
sentences can be taken as a rudimentary form of interpretation of the text,
which, however, was permanently to be made. Therefore, in the last chapter
the question is raised what effects this - almost forced -
‘text-processing’ had on the merchants’ mentality. By a
comparison between the structural arrangement of information as found in the
books at level two as well as three and the way in which the Italian
merchants describe the events in the literary genre of the libri di
famiglia, it was possible to discern striking parallels, which to a
certain extent have already been established by researchers. Since the form
of the ‘texts’ of the Memoriale and of the ledger are due
to a process which the merchants went along with rather than initiated, it
does not appear appropriate any more to interpret both textual genres as
equal indications of the mental disposition of the merchants. Instead, some
elements of the mercantile mentality were shaped by dealing with the account
books and left their mark on the libri di famiglia. In conclusion it might be said that the development
of fundamental methods of bookkeeping did not result from a search for the
best solution for the calculation of the profits the enterprise made; it was
a consequence of the conditions which writing as a medium of memory imposed
on the merchant. This interaction had the effect that the mentality of the
merchants was apparently more influenced by their dealing with the account
books than that, conversely, the comprehensive conceptual ideas of the
businessmen had an impact on the structure of the books. Here, writing manifests itself not as a tool used by
the homo faber according to his ideas, but as part of the cultural
assets, which guides the action of its user by providing norms and
determining procedures. The fact that a medium was produced by humans does
not say anything about its availability in a certain situation. Medieval
accounting developed further especially because it was inevitable that the
merchants adjusted to the conditions of the medium and thus contributed to
that dynamics which in the end led to elaborate methods of bookkeeping. It
can be assumed that, in dealing with modern media, such processes with their
inherent dynamics can be discerned as well, their rules being established by
the medium and not by the user. It remains to be seen if these inherent
dynamics will lead to results comparable to those observed in the case of
medieval accounting. |
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