‘American Bookkeeping’ in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries which was not American

ABSTRACT

This article conducts a study of the circumstances surrounding an ‘invention’ by Edmond Degrange père in 1804 which was said to be ‘American’. Degrange sought to simplify double-entry bookkeeping by combining the journal and ledger on a single page. Based on a review of the curious follow-on literature, first in Belgium and then also in Italy, France and particularly in Germany, which labelled this invention as ‘American’, even though no American had anything to do with it and it was unknown in the USA, we speculate why a French ‘invention’ was labelled as ‘American’.

KEYWORDS:

• Double-entry bookkeeping
• bookkeeping history
• accounting history
• Edmond Degrange
• American inventiveness

Acknowledgements

The authors express their deep gratitude to Kees Camfferman, Dale Flesher, Michela Magliacani, Marc Nikitin, Alan Sangster, and Massimo Sargiacomo for advice and assistance provided during the research for this paper, to the reviewers, discussant and participants of the 2024 Mid-year Webinar of the Academy of Accounting Historians, and especially to the editor and the two reviewers for this journal for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Kheil’s given names in Czech were Karel Petr, but he sometimes used Carl Peter in his writings published in German. His son was also named Karel Petr.

2 All verbatim excerpts from German and French sources were translated into English by one of the authors, aiming to convey the writings’ meaning in modern English, while adhering as closely as possible to the literal originals.

3 The writings of Edmond Degrange père and fils were highly influential for the development of accounting thought and practice in nineteenth-century Europe. Nikitin (2005) offers a detailed review of their lives and achievements, including Degrange père’s earlier innovation on the five general accounts system (Degrange 1795), which his son continued to develop, and disseminated internationally. For example, during the second half of the nineteenth century, their writings became formative for the development of agricultural accounting in Italy (Mussari and Magliacani 2007).

4 This view is corroborated by Nikitin (2005), who, when analysing the success of Degrange’s writings in France, made no reference whatsoever to Degrange’s single Journal method becoming known as ‘American’.

5 Besta (1922, 443) claimed that this V. F. Roland was the first writer in France to use that label for Degrange’s method. However, both Kheil's (1908, 51) reference to V. F. Roland’s nationality and the fact that his work was published in Belgium rather suggest that Roland may have been the first to use the label ‘American’ for Degrange’s method in the French language. Relying on Besta (1922), Peragallo (1938) also dated the origin of this label to 1852. Without supporting references, Mattessich (2008, 21) speculated that the label was of Belgian origin, too.

6 In fact, Degrange (1804) explicitly referred to Jones. Admitting that the international attention paid to Jones’s method inspired his writing, Degrange (1804, 5–11) diagnosed that Jones’s method did not show any signs of novel thought, was overly simplistic, superficial, and fundamentally different from his proposed single Journal based on double entry.

7 Notably, and in contrast to other authors, Klein (1886) suggested that the single Journal method had been used successfully also by big enterprises.

8 The authors are grateful to Alan Sangster for bringing this translation to their attention.

9 The full title of the book (Bennet 1824) which appeared on the title-page of the 7th edition published in 1824 was: The American System of Practical Book-keeping, adapted to the Commerce of the United States in its Domestic and Foreign Relations, comprehending all the Modern Improvements in the Practice of the Art; and Exemplified in One Set of Books Kept by Double Entry, embracing Five Different Methods of Keeping a Journal. Designed for the Use of Schools. To Which Are Added Forms of the Most Improved Auxiliary Books; and a Copperplate Engraving, Exhibiting, at One View, the Final Balance of the Leger. Bennet was said on the cover to be ‘Professor to the Accountants Society of New-York’. In this edition, Bennet did not refer by name to any European writers on bookkeeping.

10 As noted at the outset of this study by our quotation from de Roover, even he was unaware of any such evidence.

11 It stands to reason that these attempts were inspired by the commercial success of the aforementioned ‘English method’ by Edward Thomas Jones. For this method, Jones was granted a patent by the English king, by which nobody could use his method without Jones’s permission (Kheil 1908, 19).