1 THE RATIONALITY OF EARLY MODERN MERCHANT BOOKKEEPING: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH Guillaume Daudin ([email protected]) 1 Pierre Gervais 2 Preliminary version: please do not quote. We offer a way to test to what extent double-entry book-keeping is the vector of rationalization of merchant activity that was described by Weber, and explore alternative possible motivations. We move the focus away from the structure and theory of accounts into the daily practice of the agents themselves. We use the new, unique database of eighteenth-century merchant accounts developed in France by the MARPROF project. 28 months worth of accounts digitized from three different account books, two from France and one from North America, dating back to the 1750s, 1770s and 1780s yielded no less than 7,555 postings. We show that while indeed showing a discernible rationality in their choices, Early Modern merchants thought more in terms of key relationships and less in terms of key products, and kept track of their profits continuously within their activities rather than as part of a final balance sheet. JEL Code: M41, N83 The link between double-entry book-keeping (DEB) and the rise of capitalism has been repeatedly postulated, ever since Weber argued at the beginning of the 20 th century that the capitalist spirit was present only when « a calculation of capital in terms of money [wa]s made, whether by modern book-keeping methods or in any other way » which would enable the capitalist to tell whether « at the close of a business period, the balance of the enterprise in money assets (or, in the case of a continuous enterprise, the periodically estimated money value of 1 PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine, LEDa-DIAL UMR IRD 225, F-75016 Paris, France PSL, IRD, DIAL UMR IRD 225, F-75016 Paris, France SciencesPo, OFCE, F-75007 Paris, France 2 CREW/CRAN University Paris 3, Paris, France
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THE RATIONALITY OF EARLY MODERN MERCHANT BOOKKEEPING: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH
We offer a way to test to what extent double-entry book-keeping is the vector of
rationalization of merchant activity that was described by Weber, and explore alternative
possible motivations. We move the focus away from the structure and theory of accounts
into the daily practice of the agents themselves. We use the new, unique database of
eighteenth-century merchant accounts developed in France by the MARPROF project. 28
months worth of accounts digitized from three different account books, two from France
and one from North America, dating back to the 1750s, 1770s and 1780s yielded no less
than 7,555 postings. We show that while indeed showing a discernible rationality in their
choices, Early Modern merchants thought more in terms of key relationships and less in
terms of key products, and kept track of their profits continuously within their activities
rather than as part of a final balance sheet.
JEL Code: M41, N83
The link between double-entry book-keeping (DEB) and the rise of capitalism has been
repeatedly postulated, ever since Weber argued at the beginning of the 20th century that the
capitalist spirit was present only when « a calculation of capital in terms of money [wa]s made,
whether by modern book-keeping methods or in any other way » which would enable the
capitalist to tell whether « at the close of a business period, the balance of the enterprise in money
assets (or, in the case of a continuous enterprise, the periodically estimated money value of
1 PSL, Université Paris-Dauphine, LEDa-DIAL UMR IRD 225, F-75016 Paris, France PSL, IRD, DIAL UMR IRD 225, F-75016 Paris, France SciencesPo, OFCE, F-75007 Paris, France 2 CREW/CRAN University Paris 3, Paris, France
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assets) exceeds the capital, i.e. the estimated value of the material means of production used for
acquisition in exchange. » 3 Sombart took up Weber's focus on the « calculating spirit », and
narrowed it down to double-entry bookkeeping, which in his view was "absolutely indissociable."
with capitalism.4 In the past three decades or so, historians of accounting have repeatedly tried to
empirically demonstrate this link, along two main paths of inquiry. First, a « best practice »
approach has focused on textbooks and normative rules for accountants. It has tried to identify
specific accounting methods that could be linked to a calculating, profit-minded approach itself
deemed characteristic of capitalism. A recent paper thus listed among the « capitalist » tools that
one could find in Early Modern accounting textbooks: the determination of the overall financial
position of an agent through a balance sheet, the measurement of changes in this financial
position over time (Weber's profit calculation through comparison of assets before and after, so
to speak), the computation through specialized accounts of the profit made on specific types of
goods in which an agent was particularly interested, the tracking of inventory of these goods, and
the accumulation of information which could be used to help decision-making and reduce
uncertainty.5 The debate has taken on a new urgency with the recent rise of global history.
Double-entry book-keeping (DEB) was explicitely dismissed by Kenneth Pomeranz as having
any explanatory relevance to the noticeable quickening of European growth from the eighteenth
century on, especially since comparable developments took place in Asia according to some
authors. Others, like John F. Padgett, insist that the necessity to identify the components of a
business in order to create accounts, and the objectification of business practices it implied, was
3 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 18. 4 Quoted in Chiapello, « Accounting and the birth of the notion of capitalism ». Sombart's Der moderne kapitalismus has never been translated into English; see Mark Nikitin's translation in French of Sombart's chapter on double-entry accounting (Nikitin, « La thèse de Sombart ») as well as the accompanying articles by Nikitin and Yannick Lemarchand in the same journal issue. Note that Sombart is usually held to be the first to link strongly double-entry accounting to capitalism; Weber's essay was both vaguer, and published in book form in 1920 only, so that accounting historians tend to refer to the « Sombart thesis. » An abridged earlier version of this thesis is available in French in Sombart, Le bourgeois, especially pp. 117-121. More references can be found in Lemarchand, McWatters, et Pineau-Defois, « The Current Account as Cognitive Artefact ». 5 Edwards, Dean, et Clarke, « Merchants’ accounts, performance assessment and decision making in mercantilist Britain ».
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what led to the rise of the impersonal firm and thus of modern economic practice; a similar view
was adopted and popularized by best-sellers like David Landes' Wealth and Poverty of Nations, or
Jane Gleeson-White's Double Entry.6
Second, a number of authors have empirically inventoried and discussed the nature and
extent of profit calculations in surviving accounts of economic agents in Western Europe and in
its colonies from the sixteenth century onward.7 The latter discussion, however, has confirmed
what was already Sydney Pollard's position: profit calculations were rare, haphazard, and limited
to single ventures or partnerships which had to be terminated, or to large stockholding concerns
such as the various East India Companies.8 In his 2010 synthesis, J. S. Toms listed barely more
than a dozen known instances of landholders or manufacturers performing actual calculations of
return on capital employed (as defined by accountants today) in Great-Britain over three and a
half centuries (1500-1840). 9 Merchants, the primary users of the most advanced forms of
accounting, were generally speaking widely oblivious to profit calculations, a fact usually
explained by the highly segmented, highly uncertain nature of the markets they operated on. The
prevalence of wild, unpredictable market swings meant that such ex post calculations were of little
use for forecasting or strategic choices. 10 Overall, and whatever accounting textbooks
recommended,11 most agents did not calculate profit on a regular basis. This calls into question
Weber's hypothesis that quantification was necessary to capitalist activity. While this necessity
6Pomeranz, The great divergence, p. 167-68; for the so called system of "Chinese Double-Entry Book-keeping", see for instance Dixin et Chengming, Chinese Capitalism, 1522-1840. For a restatement of the importance of double-entry accounting, see Padgett et Powell, The emergence of organizations and markets., especially Chapters 5-7 by J. Padgett; Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and Gleeson-White, Double entry. 7 See Toms, « Calculating profit: A historical perspective on the development of capitalism » ; Bryer, « The history of accounting and the transition to capitalism in England. Part one » and Bryer, « The history of accounting and the transition to capitalism in England. Part two » ; Fleischman et Parker, What is past is prologue. 8 Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management, a Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, p. 249 9 J. S. Toms, « Calculating Profit.., » loc.cit., p. 210, 213-214. 10 For a general assessment of commercial accounting, see J. R. Edwards, A History of Financial Accounting, London: Routledge, 1989. On market unpredictability, see Yamey, « The ‘particular gain or loss upon each article we deal in’ » ; also Gervais, « Mercantile Credit and Trading Rings in the Eighteenth Century ». 11 For a discussion of textbooks calling into question the extent to which they followed a « capitalist » rationality, see Pierre Gervais, « Why Profit and Loss Didn’t Matter: The Historicized Rationality of Early Modern Commerce, » in Merchants and Profit.., op. cit., p. 33-52.
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seems obvious today, the shape it took and the usages it generated in the Early Modern Period
are still far from clear.
The present paper aims at opening a new path of inquiry into this question, by moving the
focus away from the structure and theory of accounts into the daily practice of the agents
themselves. Given the paucity of profit calculations and balance sheets, researchers so far have
mostly turned toward qualitative analyses of the way accounts were built, to prove the
rationalizing intent of their users and the possibility, if not the actual use, of rational
quantifications of profit. In contrast, in this paper, we look for quantitative patterns within large
series of discrete accounting events. Our basic idea is to check whether the rhythms and
regularities governing the recording of events linked to various accounts show significant
variations that can be interpreted as symptoms of more or less conscious accounting strategies.
In double-entry accounting in particular, each accounting event is recorded carefully in the
“Journal,” as a transfer of value from one account to another, with the account receiving value
debitor to the account giving it: a cash payment from Merchant X to the firm, for instance, will
be recorded as « Cash debitor to Merchant X for the amount received, » while a sale on credit of,
say, tea, to Merchant Y will be listed as « Merchant Y debitor to Tea for value of tea delivered. »
In the first case, the value transferred ends up in the cash box, and Merchant X is credited of the
amount she paid to the firm. In the second case, Merchant Y is debited with the amount of tea
she received, her account to be settled later through a payment from her to the firm, while the
Tea account is credited for the amount of tea sold. In the “Accounts Current,” each line is copied
twice, once for each account concerned (e. g. « Merchant Y debitor to Tea for x amount » in the
« Merchant Y » account, and « Tea creditor to Merchant Y for x amount delivered her » in the
« Tea » account), hence the name "double-entry" accounting.12 The raw material of accounts are
12 Explain bank statement (statement from the point of view of the bank, when we give value to it it receives and thus is debitor while we are creditor)
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these transfers of value, associated to a specific date and a pair of debtor and creditor accounts.
These « postings » are the events we are studying.
While not by any means the only form of accounting used in the Early Modern period, the
basic concept of double-entry accounting13 has remained fairly unchanged at least since the
sixteenth century.14 It offered a foolproof way of tracking complex flows of value among multiple
accounts, and became a favored tool among the largest traders in Western Europe and its
colonies. It is particularly suited to our purpose since operators trading worldwide in very large
amounts used it: one expects their bookkeeping to be as sophisticated as their operations. The
present paper measures the degree and internal logic of this sophistication by a statistical analysis
of the postings.
We benefitted from a new, unique database of eighteenth-century merchant accounts
developed in France by the MARPROF project. On the surface the number of data points is
modest, with only 28 months worth of accounts digitized from three different account books,
two from France and one from North America, dating back to the 1750s, 1770s and 1780s.15 The
two French merchant firms, Abraham Gradis from Bordeaux and the Chaurand brothers from
Nantes, were large international traders in colonial products active throughout the French
Atlantic, and, in Gradis' case, throughout Europe as well;16 the third source, Levi Hollingsworth
from Philadelphia, was a large regional merchant and flour dealer, active on the east coast of
North America and in the Caribbean, with significant direct links to Great-Britain. However,
barely over two years of activity of these three merchants yielded no less than 7,555 postings, a
measure of the frenetic recording activity characteristic of Early Modern commercial operators;
day in and day out, each merchant recorded an average seven transactions a day. 17 These
transactions were spread over a total of 1129 accounts, most of them personal accounts of agents
13 Accounting is used for the concept. Bookeeping is used for the activity (see …) 14 History of accounting (Edwards, littleton); Yannick on charge/discharge; single-entry? 15 Marprof references, sources. 16 Affaire du Canada, Gradis' official role. 17 Bibliography on 3 merchants; explanation of aggregate/disaggregate entries, and discrete figures per merchant.
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with whom each of the three merchants had dealing, ten to twenty different real accounts in
which a merchant's assets were recorded (cash, goods, various forms of debt, also « adventures, »
that is shipping ventures often in partnership18), and at least one « profit and loss » account
(Table 1).
Table 1: The three sources Who? Gradis Chaurand Hollingsworth
When? 10/1755 to 2/1757 16.5 months
10/1774-12/1775 and 1/1784-5/1784
30 months
2/1786 – 1/1787 12 months
Where? Bordeaux Nantes Philadelphia
Type of activity
The Gradis firm was a commercial and shipping house active in the European Atlantic
colonies and on the Atlantic coast of Europe
Shippers from Nantes, active during the second half of the eighteenth c. a focused on the
French sugar islands
General merchant in Philadelphia, partly specialized in
flour
Number of accounts 262 246 785 Number of postings 1681 1388 4714
Each posting linked a pair of accounts, which we will call here a "dyad", and included a date
and an amount. In some cases, it can be associated with a discrete transaction that is identifiable,
suggesting that the pattern of postings was simply the pattern of economic activity. However, in
many cases, transactions were not recorded individually, but lumped together in a single posting
even though they might have occurred over a few days or weeks.
For example, on October 12th 1786, Hollingsworth or his bookkeeper wrote down the
following posting:
N. & D. Sellers Drs to Comm. Acco.t on am.t of Rolling Screens &c had from them from august 1784 to December 1785 being £288.18.6 @ 2 1/2 p. c.t £7.4.6 deduct so much before charg.d Ledger K 2.1.1
Hollingsworth was agent to the firm N. & D. Sellers and sold various products (including
rolling screens for windows) between August 1784 and December 1785 for the value £288.18.6.
His commission rate was 2.5%. His total commission was thus £7.4.6. Part of this commission
was already recorded in an earlier Ledger K (probably £5.3.5). But £2.1.1. were recorded only in
18 Note that in the eighteenth century such venture accounts were often actually not held to be real, asset accounts as we see them today, but rather a peculiar form of transfer account
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October 1786, nearly one year after the last transaction. It suggests that Hollingsworth was not
interested in tallying his commission profits on a remotely regular basis in his main books.
On June 6th 1755, Gradis or his bookkeeper wrote down the following posting:
Farines Dt a Beaujon Petit & Comp £ 17391.9.5 pour 800 Barrils de farine qu'ils nous ont vendu & Livré Suivant Leur facture, Savoir une facture du 28 avril de la marque trenty 100 Barrils £ 2166.5.9 une dt 6 may idem 100 2166.5.9 une dt 10 d d 100 2154 une dt 16 d Frette, Clairac 200 4335.10 une dt 19 d Idem 300 6514.5 [total] 800 Barrils £ 17336.-.6 a deduire; je dis à ajouter p la 1/2 des fraix £ 96.1.4 a deduire a luy Credité de trop le 21 may 40.12.5 Reste 55.8.11
Gradis was regularly buying flour from the firm Beaujon Petit & Cie. Between April 28th
and May 19th, 800 barrels arrived. Gradis got around to credit them almost three weeks latter
(unilaterally reducing the bills by 0.5% for unspecified fees). In addition, he added in in this
posting a correction on a preceding posting for £40.12.5. He was not tracking closely his
relationship with Beaujon. Delayed or aggregated postings can be found frequently throughout
the three sources we use (even though they are rarely spelled out as clearly as in the preceding
examples).
Other sources of variation in postings occurred through the vagaries of compensations
between accounts. A relatively simple instance of this would be if a creditor Y was paid off by a
merchant with an I.O.U. received earlier from a debtor X. This operation normally implied two
transactions: « Bills Receivable owes Debtor X for amount of her note of hand, » meaning that X
had paid some debt (or loaned some money) to the merchant by giving an I.O.U. ; and « Creditor
Y owes Bills Receivable amount of note from X given in payment, » a second transaction in
which the merchant would pay off a debt to Y by giving her the note received earlier from X.
Yet, fairly often, one can find transactions such as « Creditor Y owes Debtor X for amount of the
latter's note of hand received from X and transferred to Y today. » The recording process
bypassed one step, simply because the I.O.U. had not remained long enough in the hands of the
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agent to warrant a specific mention in the Bills Receivable account.19 Such shortcuts occurred
across the board among all three sets of books we have used.
These three books contained at least one « profit and loss » account in which net gains and
net losses were recorded, in a rather haphazard fashion — indeed the largest merchant of our set,
Gradis from Bordeaux, never balanced his books, and only occasionally balanced individual
accounts. Both Hollingsworth and Chaurand drew up a balance sheet every year, but also closed
accounts in the course of their daily activities and dumped unceremoniously the result into the
profit and loss account, so that at the end of the year the sources of their profit remained murky
at best. On the whole, between the uneven grouping of transactions from one account to the
next and the apparently random way in which accounts were closed or left open, two accounts
with economically similar value and similar rhythm of real-world transactions could be treated
very differently indeed in terms of how the activity in each was recorded in the book-world of
accounting. Posting, the recording of a transfer of value between accounts at a certain point in
time, was the product of a deliberate choice by the bookkeeper, and thus represented a nexus in
which exogenous economic necessity met recording strategies.
This considerable leeway each merchant had in deciding how minutely transactions in a
particular account would be recorded brings us back to the Weber/Sombart thesis: to what
extent can the recording choices made by the actor be analyzed statistically as a result of
underlying strategies, and to what extent can these strategies be understood as the product of a
rationalized approach to book-keeping? In other words, if we try to hold all other things equal,
admittedly a difficult task, would these Early Modern merchants turn out to be more careful, in a
measurable way, with what they themselves considered more important accounts? Or were they
translating perfectly into their recording the exogenous influence of multiple economic pressures,
with no particular expression of will on their part? Was the book-world simply a homothetic
19 In the end, complex transactions could be reduced to one entry, as in Gradis: "David Lopes Dt à Marchand Fils £ 25490.3.4. p son mandat sur ledit pour des Sucres qu'il luy a vendu & Livré Suivant son Compte. 29 octobre 1754" (traduire, expliquer et remonter ?)
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image of the real-world or a systematically deformed image? Because we can for the first time
ever draw significant statistical inferences from a large enough set of recorded transactions, this
becomes a question which is worth trying to answer. Over several thousand records, it is hard to
believe that no manifestation of a Weberian rationality would be felt at all in recording choices;
and a careful search for explanatory variables should enable us to weigh, at least approximately,
the various sources and expressions of this rationality. An added advantage is that if indeed it
turns out that these merchants did not spread their effort randomly across accounts, then their
choices can also be scrutinized in order to better understand how they themselves thought of
what was important to record precisely and thus, presumably, what was at the core of their
activity and their profits.
We first present the various stages through which we processed the data in order to separate
the exogenous economic constraints on recording transactions from the endogenous choices
made by each merchant. Then we present the statistical treatment and its results. We conclude
with an assessment of these results. We show that while indeed showing a discernible rationality
in their choices, Early Modern merchants thought more in terms of key relationships and less in
terms of key products, and kept track of their profits continuously within their activities rather
than as part of a final balance sheet. There were also distinct signs of different behavior among
our three merchants that can be explained by their different status.
1. Qualitative analysis of accounts
1.1. Different types of accounts
The construction of explanatory variables led us in two different directions. The first one
identifies variables thanks to information outside the books themselves: the nature of the
accounts (e.g. personal or goods), the place of adobe of the holders of personal accounts, etc.
The second one looks at what the books tell us of each account to characterize the postings in
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which it is involved: we will discuss it in the part along with the quantitative analysis of the
accounts.
First, it is easy to identify broad categories of accounts. Most accounts are personal; the next
most important category are goods and services accounts (Table 4). Past this two large groups, a
very limited number of general accounts, some « real » (Cash, various forms of commercial paper
accounts such as « Bills receivable » and « payable, » bank deposits for Hollingsworth), others
called « nominal » today, mostly Profit and Loss and a few other incomes and expenses accounts
(« House expenses » for instance), should be set apart, since they were central by their very
nature, and appeared in one form or other in a vast percentage of posting.20 We also set apart
accounts associated with landed property, from which expenses associated with these properties
were usually debited21.
The accounts dealing with profits are of special interest to explore the Sombart hypothesis.
Their qualitative exam allows us to distinguish three categories of profit and loss accounts. These
three categories could be simultaneously used in an accounting system. The first type was simply
a list of operational incomes and expenses, left to accumulate without ever being balanced (or
very rarely). This might have provided the basis for the construction of an income statement, but
this type of document is never present in our sources. In such a case, the only accounts reflecting
directly profits or losses were the income and expense ones (type 1 accounts in Figure 1)
provided no Profit & Loss accounts were used simultaneously. The second type of accounts
gathered at regular intervals all profits and losses on all accounts, thus creating a final balance
(type 2 accounts in Figure 1). This allowed for attribution and computation of profit, but only at
specific times. The last type of accounts was used to compute profit and losses on the fly (type 3
accounts in Figure 1), by closing accounts in whole or in part when the need arose. This could be
20 ≈25 to 30% transactions = « pure » compensations; Cash, a limited number of commercial paper accounts, and Profit and loss were implicated in all other postings. 21 Note for accounting specialists: these expense accounts, which should have been nominal accounts according to current rules, closed regularly into profit and loss (an expense being a loss), were thus turned into asset accounts, which increased in value with each new expense debited to them.
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complemented by the construction of a separate final balance at regular intervals (type 2 and type
3 accounts could be used in the same accounting system). The type 3 accounts allowed for the
tracking of profits in real time, but not for a detailed analysis of the sources of profit by
themselves. One had to carefully transfer all the information gathered in type 3 accounts to type
2 accounts to make a final balance. None of our three merchants ever applied such a
comprehensive approach; indeed it would have ben difficult to implement, since type 3 accounts,
kept over months or even years, usually spread about various scattered pages of the Accounts
Current volume, and closing them in a systematic fashion would have required a painstaking
rereading of all the very diverse postings they contained, in order to regroup them into
manageable categories. In practice, accounts could go for months or even years without being
"settled" or equivalently "balanced", and a whole continuum of intermediary solutions existed.
Figure 1: The various profit and loss accounts
Each account in an accounting system could be associated with each type of profit and loss
accounts in a posting through which all or part of its value would be transferred to one type or
another of profit and loss account. For illustration, Table 2 shows the percentage of all accounts
which were present in a posting with each type of profit and loss account. Table 3 shows the
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distribution of all accounts according to the number of types of profit or loss accounts they were
linked with. Our three merchants had very different habits. It seems very difficult at that point to
generalize about the way accounting was used to track profits.
Table 2: Usage of each type of profit and loss accounts
%of accounts Type 1 (running income and expenses) Type 2 (final balance) Type 3 (on-the-fly
balance) Chaurand 20% 71% 18%
Gradis 6% 0% 26% Hollingsworth 7% 5% 6%
Table 3: Prevalence of simultaneous uses of different types of profit and loss accounts
%of accounts Never included in profit tracking
Included in one form
Included in two forms
Included in all three forms
Chaurand 16% 63% 14% 6% Gradis 71% 25% 3% 0%
Hollingsworth 84% 15% 1% 0%
Overall, we end up with eight types of accounts, with personal accounts and accounts of
goods and services providing the bulk of the population of accounts for all three merchants
(Table 4).
Table 4: Typology of accounts
Source Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth Total
Personal accounts 185 220 705 1,110
Goods and services (including commission accounts and
partnerships) 45 30 52 94
Commercial paper 8 8 4 20
Real estate 2 1 16 19
Cash 1 1 1 3
Running income and expenses accounts (some are classified in in
other categories as well)
(8) 1 (18) (27)
Profit and losses (running accounts) 1 1 1 3 Profit and losses (final balances 1 1 1 3
Total 244 261 784 1,289
1.2. Specific and general
A second major characteristic which can differentiate one account from another stems from
the fact that some accounts play a specific role within the accounting systems because they cover
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a generic form of asset. As such, they are used by the economic agent to track potentially very
diverse activities, and therefore are not linkable to any specific economic process. An obvious
example is the "Cash" account, which concentrates all incomes and disbursements in metallic
currency, regardless of the economic activity which gave rise to these payments. And the general
"Pofit & Loss" accounts presented in the preceding paragraph, were also accounts which would
come into play regardless of the type of activity involved, both when they were used on the fly or
within the final balance.
In our analysis, "Cash" and “Profit & Loss” make up categories of their own. But among the
“Goods & Services” and “Personal” category, numerous accounts, while not as universal in their
potential use as cash, or profit & loss accounts, would still come into play across a wide variety of
activities: they must be identified as such since they cannot easily serve as a basis to analyse the
link between the accounting work and the type of economic activity involved. Freight accounts,
and generally accounts listing charges of various merchandises, were also general in nature since
the goods involved could be very diverse. In addition, our merchants often kept a "general
merchandise" account, covering goods in which they traded more rarely or marginally, a "various
debtors" account for small, free-floating debts, a "commission account" for principals who used
their services occasionally or for small quantities, and therefore did not warrant the opening of a
specific personal account, an "interest" account for similarly ephemeral or marginal debt
relationships, etc. Also in “Personal” and “Goods and services” categories, a series of accounts,
while dealing with a specific activity, still seemed to dump together potentially diverse economic
partners, such as bottomry loans listed together in a merchant's account book, or commission
accounts on sugar or coffee from a variety of planters and colonial merchants. In all these cases
the accounting work was a product of a multiplicity of potentially varied links gathered together
primarily for the practical reason that they did not warrant a more careful tracking in separate
personal accounts. Such accounts we categorized as “General,” while all the other “Goods &
Services” and “Personnal” accounts are classified as “Specific.”
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Most of the accounts in the “Paper” category also had to be categorized as “General,” since
they very similar or "Cash" and “Profit & Loss”. Most of these accounts cover the commercial
paper exchanged in lieu of cash —various IOU, letters of exchange, and bank notes22. As with
cash, paper received or given could be linked to any and all economic activity. However, a few
rare accounts in the “Paper” category recorded only the commercial paper owed to or being
owed by a specific individual (Table 5).
Table 5: General and Specific accounts Source Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth
General Specific General Specific General Specific Goods & Services 6 39 3 27 2 50
Paper 7 1 7 1 4 0 Personnal 2 183 1 219 1 705
1.3. Geography and family
Other account qualities we may consider in order to differentiate between accounts are
geographical and familial. This is actually quite difficult to do given the limitations of the sources.
Family members are recognized by surname: this does not yield the identification of many of
them. There are six accounts for family members in Chaurand’s books (4% of personal
accounts), four in Gradis’s (2%) and fourteen in Hollinsgworth’s (2%).
Geographical location was derived from the indications contained in the database. Only 343
accounts (all but seven being personal) could be classified (27% of accounts) (Table 6)23.
22 , technically commercial paper as well since banks were universally private endeavors (indeed some apparently "personal" accounts were actually banking accounts, from private bankers such as Chabbert 1banquet in Paris, who discounted Gradis' paper). PG DOIT METTRE UNE RÉFÉRENCE 23 Proportion of known locations, figures; explain use of Margeurite Martin for Gradis, of final settlement for Hollingsworth
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Table 6: Geography of accounts Lieu – source Chaurand Gradis Holling Total
Same town 55 18 10 63 Same region, but not same town 32 46 25 103
Same country, but not same region 46 34 5 85 Same continent, but not same country 15 9 0 24
Overseas 27 39 2 68 Total 155 146 42 343
Unfortunately, we did not find enough data to ascertain religious affiliation (names can be
quite misleading). We could only identify the gender of 153 accounts (only eight concerned
women).
2. Analysis of accounts
Good & Services and Personal accounts are the most numerous. They are not a
homogenous group: in this section we use quantitative analysis of the size of credits and debits
posting to distribute them in multiple categories. We then use network analysis to identify their
potential role in network management. In both cases, we eliminated from our study a number of
dyads which, while important for the accounting "effort," do not correspond to actual economic
relationships and therefore would confuse the classification of accounts. Balancing accounts, or
drawing up balance sheets generally, did not belong to the same category of accounting activity as
recording transactions, and were not allowed to influence the results. Transfers between several
accounts belonging to the same actor were not included either. These transactions were
reinserted however in the later calculations.
2.1. Different types of goods and services accounts
The books allow us to identify different types of goods and services or personal accounts
that should influence postings. We discuss goods and services accounts first. Different types of
economic activities were associated to each of them. A basic example would be the « Weighing »
account maintained by our Philadelphia merchant, Hollingsworth. It is one element in the
records of his partnerships in a fleet of sloops on the Delaware. Weighing fees were owed by
16
customers of the sloops and were listed separately because they had to be included in the
accounts of the partnership, as part of its income — they were not owned by Hollingsworth
himself, but by him and his partners, and had to be shared with them. Because weighing fees
were necessarily modest (the average value credited was one colonial pound), the transactions
concerning this particular account had to take a certain shape: all outward bound value (credits
arising from weighing fees) were small sums owed by individual customers and recorded in a long
series of transactions, while all inward bound value were balances of the account transferred at
most two or three times a year to the credit of the partnership in order to be shared between the
A similar control can be used for the other, much larger family of accounts used by Early
Modern merchants: the personal accounts of the various partners with which they were doing
business. For instance, a banker or fellow merchant used as a source of financing would be asked
for lump-sum loans, and repaid in installments; in such a situation, the personal account of this
particular creditor could be said to be a « taker » account, since it operated just like a « collector »
19
account of goods, with a structural bias toward a few large outgoing flows of value (the loans)
and small incoming payments to reimburse the loan.25 The reverse could be said for a personal
account concerning one or several individuals to whom one of our three merchants had loaned
money and who were repaying him in installments; these would be « giver » accounts, debited
with the large value of the original loan and more slowly credited with each repayments (exactly
as a « distributor » account would be debited with the original stock supplied, and credited with
each small sale). Similarly, large operators linked to a merchant for shipping ventures or
insurance-selling purposes would generate dyads in which the norm was large transfers of value,
while the neighbor to which one of our merchants occasionally sold goods, and for which a
running account was kept, would be concerned only by small transactions, and the corresponding
dyads would reflect this situation.
Table 9: Typology of personal accounts
Type of account Debit Credit Examples
Wholesale Large value per posting Large value per posting Large operators
Retail Small value per posting Small value per posting Small operators
Taker Small value per posting Large value per posting Bank
Giver Large value per posting Small value per posting Client in debt
We cannot classify personal accounts according to Figure 2 because the number of postings
per account is much more limited. There are 94 Goods and Services: they are mentioned either as
debit or credit 1,135 times (11 credits or debits per account). There are 1,110 personal accounts:
they are only mentioned either as debit or credit 4,301 times (4 debits or credits per account). It
does not make sense to run Student tests in the same way. Instead, we look at the ratio between
credits and debits in the source-specific distribution of these ratios (see ). « Taker » and « giver »
accounts, the functional equivalents of « collector » and « distributor » accounts, were identified
25 Still, the temporality would be different, since the loaner « taker » account would be credited first and debited later, while the « collector » account would receive a number of small debits, the final large credit taking place at the end of the collection process. However, our periods of observations are too short to explore that direction.
20
by the ratio of the average debit on the average credit, since there were too few observations per
personal account to support a valid Student test. If, for a given merchant, the ratio belonged to
the first quintile of the distribution of the same ratios for all accounts, the account was deemed «
giver; » the account belong to an actor being loaned large sums an repaying them little by little.
Conversely, a ratio belonging to the last quintile of the distribution would point to a « taker »
account, with underlying large roles to our merchant, repaid in smaller increments. The accounts
thus identified were then used just as « collector » and « distributor » accounts were used for
goods and services, with a Student test being used, to identify « retail » and « wholesale »
The classification of personal accounts is much starker in Holligsworth’s books than in
Gradis’s or Chaurand’s. That is because he was much more of a retailer and a collector than the
other two: his mass of small clients and suppliers had a very different behaviour than his
merchant relations. These merchant relations form a much larger share of the world of Gradis
and Chaurand.
22
2.3. Network analysis
An additional way to characterize each account is to look its position in the networks formed
by the postings, where each posting is treated as an edge between two accounts, themselves
treated as nodes.
This is very interesting in the case of eighteenth century merchants because they had
numerous different activities that created multiple sub-networks. However, this issue is
complicated by the existence of a few accounts (Cash, bills receivable and payable, Profit &
Loss...) which by their very nature would end up as central in any accounting network. This
structural tendency may also be present, although to a lesser extent, in some other « generic »
accounts bound to be overused; examples include the so-called « general merchandise » account
in which eighteenth-century merchants dumped all peripheral sale activities, or commission
accounts to which dozens of principals would bring their wares to sell. To minimize any risk of
bias, we have restricted the networks under study either to only personal accounts or to specific
merchandizes (not « general merchandise ») and personal accounts directly linked with them.
We use two centrality measures. Networks can often be subdivided into subgroups or
"blocks", sets of actors which have close and densified relationships with one another, but
limited links to other parts of the network. Our network very clearly displays such structures,
generating at the same time two special positions for actors: "leaders" and "cut-points". First, we
identify « leading » actors as actors with the highest degree centrality, where degree centrality is
defined as the number of edges linked to each node (i.e. the number of other accounts sharing a
posting with the account of interest). A "leader" is thus an actor (in our case an account)
particularly well conncected within a block: all the members of the block are linked to this
account. Second, we identify « cutpoint » actors as actors with the highest betweeness centrality,
where betweeness centrality is defined as the number of shortest paths from all nodes to all
others that pass through that account. A "cut-point" account, in other words, is one which
provides ways for several blocks to communicate between them; removing that node from the
23
network would limit severely the possibility to communicate between blocks, or even turn some
blocks into independent, free-floating "components" (unconnected pieces of networks). Notice
that a leader account can also be a cut-point when the leader account is the only one linked to the
rest of the network. In this case, the block comunicates with the rest of the network mostly
through that particular node (account).
In the graph below we provide two examples of a "leader" and a "cut-point" account. Jacob
Raphael's account is linked to three other accounts, and indirectly a fourth, none of which are
connected to more than two accounts, with three out of four connected to only one account, that
of Raphael, which is thus clearly the lader of the group. He was Gradis' Amsterdam
correspondent. The account of David Alexander illustrates the situation of a cut-point account;
removing him would isolate from the main newtork the accounts of the brothers Charles and
Antoine Masson & Co., and of every other account connected to these two traders. Indeed the
twin accounts of the Masson brothers provide an example of an account both leader and cut-
point, since they provides the only access to the network for nine other accounts, a block within
which the Masson account are much more highly connected than anyone else as well. The
explanation of that situation is actually known. David Alexandre was a Bayonne trader through
which Gradis had started daling with the Massons, a Cadiz firm. The group around the Massons
did not have any relations to any other actor of the Gradis network. This contributes to showing
that bridges and cut-points correspond to actual roles taken by various actors with respect to
each other in their business dealings.
24
Figure 4: Interconnected personal accounts in Gradis’s books
25
26
The results using variant statistics (not shown) are closely correlated with the results using
the basic measure. As a result, we use that one.
A word of caution is necessary there. Central status is given by the bookkeeper. Some actors
may have an central role in the accountant’s activity without this role being apparent in the
accounts.
3. Analyzing dyads
3.1. Why look at the number of postings per dyad?
The accounts are the usual object of statistical analysis of private bookkeeping. How many
times each is mentioned, the mean value of a recording, etc. The difficulty with this approach lies
in the very nature of double entry accounting. By definition, an account is never mentioned by
itself, but always alongside another one. Thus, the characteristics attributed to an account A may
actually come from the account B to which it is usually associated in the records.
To sidestep this issue, we look at the pair of accounts AB. We call this given pair of
accounts, a « dyad ». It can be characterized by a) the gross, total value transferred (this is the sum
of the total value moving from account X, creditor, transferring it to account Y, debtor, and the
other in the opposite direction, from account Y creditor to account X debtor) and b) the number
of postings through which these transfers of value took place. As can be seen in Figure 5, it is not
the case that the number of postings is in strict proportion to the transferred value between two
accounts. Dyad (a relationship) carefully monitored would be characterized by multiple postings
for a given value; a relationship not closely followed would see the same value transferred
through a much smaller number of comparatively larger postings. The variable we propose to try
and explain is thus the variation in the number of postings from one dyad to the next, correcting
for the total value transferred. The fact that various accounts were not equally treated in this
27
regard is well-established for our three merchants, since the number of posting was not
proportional to the total value transferred (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Relationship between the number of postings and the total transferred value by dyad
Source: see text. The log of the number of postings for one dyad is on the y-axis and the log of the total value transferred (in livres tournois) is on the x-axis
Table 11 provides descriptive statistics on the number of postings per dyad.
28
Table 11: Descriptive statistics of the number of postings per dyad
Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth
Baseline sample
Full sample (including non-existent dyads)
Baseline sample
Full sample
Baseline sample
Full sample
Observation number 686 67,938 817 88,508 2,215 672,530
Min 1 0 1 0 1 0
Max 75 75 113 113 256 256
Mean 2.02 0.02 2.06 0.02 2.13 0.01
Std. deviation 4.58 0.50 4.96 0.52 7.59 0.45
The most frequent dyads are Caisse – Fraix généraux for Chaurand, Caisse – Lettres et Billets à payer for Gradis and Cash – House expences for Hollingsworth.
3.2. Hypotheses
The way in which an account was seen as important by a merchant could influence the
recording of transactions as well if we assume that more « effort » in the sense developed above
was devoted to more important accounts. Was a family member, a neighbor, a member of the
same religion, less consistently tracked that a socially or geographically more distant partner? Was
personal « trust » an important element in the accounting choices of our merchants ?26 Last, but
not least, could some individuals be more central to a merchant's activity than others ? The set of
relationships between accounts created for each merchant can be read as a network, and probed
with network-analysis tools, which generate a subset of accounts more central than others (within
the bounds of the network under study).27 Would the relationships with such accounts be treated
differently because of the particular role they played within the network of accounts each of our
three merchants used?
We explore four main explanations for the quality of monitoring of each dyad.
26 Bibliography on trust/networks, Hancock, Trivellato 27 Bibliography on networks; moi Annales.
29
3.2.1. Inventory management It might be the case that an important aim of bookkeeping was to manage inventories. In
that case, dyads including specific merchandize accounts should be more closely monitored. A
contrario, few postings should include at the non-specific merchandize accounts. The importance
of « general merchandise » accounts makes that hypothesis unlikely.
3.2.2. Recording for legal purposes A number of researchers have underlined the importance of legal character of bookkeeping,
as books could be used as evidence in courts28. If the main aim of bookkeeping were to record
what the bookkeeper was owned or owed, then personal accounts, including partnerships, should
be more carefully monitored.
3.2.3. Multiactivity management throught network Finally, the aim of bookkeeping might have been to manage the multiactivity of all our
merchants. This multiactivity is made apparent by the existence of sub-networks of individual
accounts (or goods and individuals) (e.g., see Figure 4). If that is the case, we expect a more
precise monitoring of central personal accounts, either centers of sub-networks or linking sub-
networks.
3.2.4. Computing and attributing profit The Sombart hypothesis suggests that the main aim of bookkeeping was to compute and
attribute profits. If that is true, we should see that dyads including Income & Expenses, running
accounts of Profit & Loss and balance accounts of Profit & Loss should be more carefully
monitored. Looking at which of these three types of dyads is looked after most closely tells us
more about the mode of computation of profits, however, since only the last on, the balance
28 Sources ???
30
accounts, were really suited to tracking profit, as we have alrady noticd when describing th
various typs of Pofit & Loss accounts.
3.3. Estimation strategy
What we observe is a series of dyads, each of them with a series of associated variables
taking various values. As the number of posting per dyad is a small integer (see Table 11), we
cannot use a simple linear least-square regression. We assume that the number of postings
follows a Poisson distribution law, and turn to a Poisson regression, which would give us
Incidence Rate Ratios, rather than coefficients, for each explanatory variables.
We estimate the following equation for each of our source:
Nijs = Mse
β0+β1x1,ijs+...+βk xk ,ijs
Where Nijs is the expected number of postings for the dyad i, j, in source s, Ms is the length in
months covered by each of our accounts and x1,ijs…xk,ijs is a set of variables linked to the dyad.
We introduce Ms as the exposure in order to normalize the coefficients of our three estimations.
We report the incidence rate ratios (IRR) rather than the coefficients. They are the
exponents of the coefficients. When the right-hand side variable is a dummy, the number of
times a given dyad will be posted over a given time period (incidence) is multiplied by the IRR in
the situation when the dummy is equal to one compared to the same dyad where it is equal to
zero. If a continuous variable increases from x to x+Δx, the incidence is multiplied by the IRRΔx.
If the variable is in log, the IRR can be interpreted as an elasticity.
The dyad includes Paper 1.63*** 1.76*** 0.52*** 1.08*
The dyad includes Cash 3.55*** 3.84*** 2.91*** 3.25*** The dyad includes a family
member 0.78* 0.70 1.18*** 1.21***
Religion omitted 0.97 omitted 0.98 The dyad includes a “large”
personal account 0.47*** 0.41*** 0.64 0.59*** The dyad includes a “small”
personal account 1.36*** 1.22*** 1.37*** 1.22*** The dyad includes a “large” Goods & services - account 0.63** 0.94 0.52 0.65*** The dyad includes a “small” Goods & services - account 1.26 1.20*** 1.03 1.24***
Constant 0.01*** 0.01*** 0.18*** 0.00***
Gradis 2.38***
Hollingsworth 20.71***
Nbr of obs 426 740 1997 3163
Pseudo-R2 0.55 0.38 0.45 0.43
***, ** and * signals statistical significance of the difference with 1 at 1, 5 and 10%.
Table 12 shows that our explanatory variables are not the whole story: the pseudo-R2 fo the
Poisson regression varies from 0.37 to 0.5 — a value which is still high enough to show that we
did identify important variables for the structure of bookkeeping. For our three merchants, the
elasticity of the number of postings to the total value recorded is around 1.5. Accounts through
which larger amounts of value were transferred were more frequently dealt with. Hollingsworth
does not seem to be tracking is general commercial paper account very closely, contrary to
Chaurand and Gradis. Only Hollingsworth could avail himself of the services of an incorporated
bank to discount his commercial paper, and this is probably why he could afford to be less
careful with commercial papers account. The three of them are pretty careful with cash. Religion
and family play an ambiguous role. We obtain the expected results for the accounts we have
identified as having big and large per-posting transfers of postings. For a given transfer of value,
the dyads including a « large » account went through less postings than the others, and vice-versa.
32
Before we check how the four hypotheses for the exploration of these data fare, an overall
observation is worth making. In some cases, the observed IRRs are quasi identical from one
merchant to the next, or at least of the same order of magnitude. While it could be argued that
the IRRs related to the structural biases of the accounts were built on common statistical
treatments based in each case on the overall distribution, so that it is rather unavoidable to end
up with similar figures, such is not the case for the most unanimous results, the relationship to
important accounts value-wise. That seems to suggest that we are capturing a common regularity
in eighteenth century bookkeeping. Moreover, variations in the IRRs can usually be easily
explained by the differences in the status of our three merchants, as we will discuss below.
Table 13: Testing the legal purpose and inventory hypotheses
Betweeness centrality among personal accounts (no weight) 1.67
0.75
0.61*
2.41***
Betweeness centrality among personal
and specific goods and services accounts (no weight)
0.68
1.67***
2.00**
0.89
In-degree centrality among personal accounts (no weight) 0.44
0.97
5.26***
0.76
Table 14 explores the role of network positions in explaining the attention given to each
account. Again, the behavior of the three merchants is not the same. Chaurand focused on
personal accounts bridging his various personal sub-neworks. Gradis on personal accounts
bridging his activity sub-networks (defined by specific goods and services networks and personal
accounts linked to them). These were also of interest to Holligsworth, but he was mostly
interested into his central relations. These differences might be linked to the existence of very
different networks. They were less overlapping and more separated for Gradis and Chaurand
than for Hollingsworth. Contrary to what could be thought at first glance, this interest for
bridging or central actors was not a self-evident result. Central accounts belonged to well-known,
usually very close partners, and the fact that they were carefully monitored means that the
accounting « effort » was not a mere issue of verification and trust. These were indeed trusted
relationships, so their monitoring is proof that they were structurally playing a particular role in
merchant life and strategies. Unknowns were not the issue; mere size was not the issue; network
position was the issue.
Table 15: Testing the profit hypotheses (number of postings)
Number of entries IRR Std. error IRR Std. error IRR Std. error IRR Std. error
Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth Pooled 1 : Income and expenses 2.73*** 1.59*** 3.93*** 3.14*** 3 : On-the-fly balance 6.51*** 2.07*** 1.14 2.31***
Table 15 uses the same method to look at the importance of profit computation. All three
merchants were careful to record profits, whatever their method. Chaurand and Gradis seemed
to prefer the on-the-fly method, whereas Hollingsworth was more precise with the income and
expenses method. This method does not tell us anything about periodic balance. The number of
34
postings associated with a dyad including a final balance Profit and Loss is simply determined by
the regularity of the balancing, not by any other criteria and we removed them from the analysis.
We run a logistic regression to check the determinants of the existence of a dyad including a
profit account.
Table 16: Testing the profit hypotheses (existence) Existence (logistic
regression – odds ratio) Odds ratio Std. error Odds ratio Std. error Odds ratio Std. error Odds
ratio Std. error
Numerous other variables are included Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth Pooled
1: Income and expenses 1.76*** 0.57** 1.46*** 1.29***
2: Final balance 403*** omitted 1.81*** 9.58*** 3: On-the-fly balance 24.89*** 8.62*** 4.98*** 8.07*** Table 16 confirms the information given by Table 2. Chaurand is pretty thorough with final
balances, but these are not present in Gradis’s books and less important than on-the-fly balances
in Holligsworth’s books. The close tracking of profits and losses by all is confirmed. Our
computations make the contrast in the way it was done by each merchant obvious. One of our
merchant, Gradis, simply did not bother to balance his books. More generally, Gradis did not
find necessary to keep as close a look on profit and loss dyads as Hollingsworth and Chaurand
did, but he was a much larger operator, from an earlier period: maybe he was sloppier either
because merchants of his time were less careful, or simply because he could afford to. Neither
Hollinsgworth nor Chaurand were perfect modern accountants. Both used a year-round Profit &
Loss account which they closed before balancing their books ; they transferred the balance in
another Profit & Loss account, into which they added the balances of all other accounts, the end
result being that no detailed view of the sources of his profits or losses could be derived from
this summary. But the close monitoring of the Profit & Loss accounts practiced by all three
merchant nonetheless proves that keeping track of profits was indeed a concern. The
aforementioned lax use of the various Profit & Loss accounts, should prompt us to look for new
ways to understand what exactly underpinned this concern, and why it was expressed in this way.
Tracking profit per se cannot explain the combination of confusing year-end statements and
careful year-round monitoring which is observed, and other hypotheses need to developed.
35
Indeed one of us has argued elsewhere that the real role of this activity was to clean out profits
and losses, not to measure them; the goal was the elaboration of a true and fair view of the assets
and liabilities once profits and losses had been removed from the picture.29 While our work does
show merchant rationality, it does not prove or disprove capitalist rationality à la Sombart. It is
unclear whether profit computations were used as a guide to action or as a way of valuing
oneself, but in both cases they were indeed treated with special care; bookkeeping was not a
simple matter of recording.
Table 17: What are the odds an account is linked to profit tracking? (existence) (logistic regression –
odds ratio) Odds ratio Std. error Odds ratio Std. error Odds ratio Std. error Odds
ratio Std. error
Numerous other variables are included Chaurand Gradis Hollingsworth Pooled
In this paper, for the first time, we have suggested a systematic quantitative way of analysing
merchant books. This is important because of the hypothesis that double-entry accounting was
central in the rise of modern economic mentalities.
Our three merchants had both common and different practices. Considering the
heterogeneity of eighteenth century merchant experience, this is not too surprising. It should
serve as a word of caution to the endeavours to interpret the rise of double entry accounting in a
uniform way. Practices were much more diverse than what bookkeeping textbooks seem to
suggest. Among the regularities, it seems that our control variable seem to be working. The
elasticity of the number of postings to the total value transferred in a dyad is around .5 for the
three merchants. None seem too interested by inventory management or close tracking of
personal accounts that could be used as evidence in court. They all give a special place to profit
38
and to network management. However, the way they looked after their profits and their networks
was quite different. This in itself is an intersting result: clearly, double-entry book-keeping was
neither the source nor the result of some common, internally coherent rationality which would
govern traders across time and space. It could accomodate significantly different approcahes to
issues as central as profit tracking or network management. As such, it cannot have sheperded
alone our merchants toward the modernity deemed central to the "Great divergence", contra
Chapman and Weber.
Explaining why they had different practices is complex because, in effect, we are working
with a sample of three. Considering how difficult it is to read and prepare for analysis manuscript
early modern account books, it might seem a bit optimistic to hope for an increase in the size of
the sample in the near future. We hope at least that future researchers will provide results we can
confront with ours.
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