2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, considered by many historians to be the defining event of the twentieth century. Not only was ‘the war to end all wars’ unprecedented in the scale of destruction, it also contributed to the demise of empires, redistributed global economic power, and encouraged revolutions and nationalist movements. The peace settlement established new concepts of collective security but also laid the foundations for the rise of fascism and World War II. Within nation states ‘total war’ necessitated substantial increases in the power of central government, mass mobilisation, and altered relations between capital and labour. The war is credited with accelerating the rate of social and cultural change.
The World War I is established as a significant event in the history of accounting. Accounting historians debate the impact of the war on the advance of cost accounting and whether the conflict hastened cost accountants’ ‘coming into the light’. During the war, accounting was implicated in social discord. The war gave impetus to the claims of women to enter the profession, encouraged demands for accounting in higher education and altered the work performed by accounting practitioners. Wartime thrift campaigns stressed the importance of accounting at home. More broadly, researchers of the accounting history of the military have contended that the world wars deserve much greater attention.
A special issue of AHR will focus on accounting histories of the World War I. A conference, to be held in September 2014, will be aligned to events commemorating the year in which the conflict began.
In addition to offering new insights to established themes, papers are invited which explore the following in relation to the war and its aftermath.
| • | Accounting for: destruction, atrocity, reparations and reconstruction | ||||
| • | Accounting and: mobilisation, the organisation and control of production, the rationalisation of slaughter, the regulation of consumption, demobilisation, the demise of empire, remembrance | ||||
| • | Taxation and financing the war | ||||
| • | The development of accounting concepts and regulation | ||||
| • | The audit of war | ||||
| • | Impacts on the accountancy profession, firms and accounting labour | ||||
| • | Developments in accounting education and training | ||||
| • | Accounting, management and strategy in wartime | ||||
| • | War, accounting and social and political transformations | ||||
| • | Accounting and the post-war settlement. | ||||
Manuscripts should be sent electronically to the editors, Warwick Funnell (w.n.funnell@kent. ac.uk) and Stephen P. Walker ([email protected]), before 28 February 2014 and follow the style guidelines of Accounting History Review. Submissions will be subject to double-blind review.