In The History of Cost and Management Accounting, two leading international scholars provide a comprehensive survey of the literature on costing and management accounting. This compelling guide covers the development of British accounting from the late 19th century to recent years, and offers a balanced review of changing theories and practices.

The articles and papers reprinted in this volume, all written after 1970, represent a departure from the earlier conventional notion of accounting history research. They approach the study of management accounting history by regarding the accounting and business records of actual organizations as indispensable source materials for historical analysis. Analysis of these records has yielded a new conception of management accounting. These studies suggest that the forces contributing to management accounting’s development are more numerous and complex than historians had realized. The case studies in the first part of the book trace the historical development of virtually all the internal accounting practices associated today with management accounting. Those in the second section consist of articles which interpret the case material.

There is growing interest in the history of accounting amongst both accounting practitioners and accounting academics. This interest developed steadily from about 1970 and really ‘took off’ in the 1990s. However, there is a lack of texts dealing with major aspects of accounting history that can be used in classrooms, to inform new researchers, and to provide a source of reference for established researchers.The great deal of research into cost and management accounting in Britain published in academic journals over the last twenty years–including the authors' own contributions–makes The History of Cost and Management Accounting an essential contribution to the field.

Caitlin Rosenthal explores quantitative management practices on West Indian and Southern plantations, showing how planter-capitalists built sophisticated organizations and used complex accounting tools. By demonstrating that business innovation can be a byproduct of bondage Rosenthal further erodes the false boundary between capitalism and slavery.