The conference aims to bring together scholars eager to explore, from a historical perspective, the multifaceted connections between merchants, markets, and trade networks, highlighting the role of accounting in facilitating and documenting such interactions.
Throughout the centuries, merchants have played a fundamental role in shaping markets and establishing business networks. Within this context, various accounting practices have emerged and evolved over time, providing insights into the economic, social, and cultural dynamics of different periods and geographical areas.
The accounting practices used in different contexts and cultural areas represents an extraordinary treasure chest for an in-depth and critical exploration of the way merchant used to report about their activities and the motivation at its origins. The role of the merchant-accountant, and subsequently the integration of professional accountants into the commercial context, represents another dimension of interest, as well as the influence exerted by management and accounting manuals specifically dedicated to merchants. The analysis of the ethical dimension offers the opportunity to delve into themes such as the ‘fair price’ and usury.
Markets and fairs have represented privileged meeting places, functioning as exchange centers for wholesalers and playing a crucial role in the distribution of various goods. Therefore, studying the relationships, dynamics, and interactions in such contexts is fundamental for understanding the financial, social, and political dimensions implicitly connected to mercantile activities, their regulation, and their relationship with public institutions.
In this regard, the relation between merchants and bankers and the importance of merchant bankers to international finance merit a specific consideration. Equally crucial is the role of trade insurance in facilitating security and stability in commercial transactions throughout the centuries.
The education of merchant is another aspect that deserves researcher’s attention. It moves from the Abacus Schools to the High Schools of Commerce (Venice, Bari, Genoa etc.), and later on to University study plan focused on the trade dimension.
The theoretical dimension provides further knowledge, thanks to national and international authors who have offered, at different historical moments, a wide range of scholarly works on the organization, management, and accounting in trading companies.
Economic and commercial networks have been fuelled by information and connections, which represent essential elements for understanding them. Both these dimensions are involved when we consider the networks of trades in their business and cultural interaction. The Silk Road is an example, connecting the East and West and stretching from the China to the Mediterranean Sea. These networks deserve our attention. They were contexts where not only goods and innovative technologies, but also ideas, philosophies were moving across creating a fertile milieu for accounting, economic and cultural evolution among different communities.
Topics of Interest:
In line with these considerations, the Conference aims to promote, through the interpretative tools typical of Accounting, Business, and Financial History, interaction and discussion among scholars on numerous research areas related to the Conference theme. As examples, but not exhaustively, the following are highlighted:
Accounting, accountants and trade practices
Accounting and Audit profession in the trade context
Historical analysis of accounting theories, systems and practices
Accounting and business networks in specific historical periods or geographical regions
Merchants, markets, banks and insurance
Fairs and Mercantile practices
Merchants, Regulations and Public Institutions
Merchants and Education
History of School of Commerce
Ethnicity, gender and diversity in merchant accounting practices
Books and Manuals for Merchants
Ethics and accounting and management practices
Cultural, social, and institutional influences on accounting practices
