Accounting history and socio-political history

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the relationship existing between the historic study of accounting entries and the investigation of historical facts of a social and political nature emerging from such entries. The primary documentation which may be found among the accounting registers may contribute, often in a determinant manner, to completing the description and interpretation of historical facts, lending increased objectivity and precision to historical research per se. The Accounting historian find him/herself investigating and explaining not only the economic significance that emerges from the gathering and the analysis of documents (whether accounting-related or not), but also the connection between this meaning and the other topics of a historical character present in economic history, in art history, in social and political events of any State or territorial area, in the relationship between families and single individuals, as well as strictly personal ones, in geographical changes, in architecture, etc.
The richness of accounting books, documents and administrative acts, present in the italian archives and libraries, going back to the medieval times (from the 13th century), support this type of research, from which it’s possible to obtain a large amount of information concerning, for example: the political power and the power relations between cities or the diverse dominions, the citizens and other organism; the judicial, administrative and tax codes of the States and public entities; the organization of the structures of Communes and States; the armed companies, the military campaigns, the nature of the dominations of States over single territories; the development of commercial activities and maritime journeys.
The paper refers particularly to some accounting registers from the beginning of the 15th century that belong to the 113 Malatesta Code series present in the Historical Archives of the central Italian city of Fano.
These accounting books was produced by the administration of Malatasta family, during the course of the Pandolfo III Malatesti dominion over the cities of Brescia and Bergamo, between the period 1405-1421. Their importance, recognized in 2002 by Carlo Antinori, is enormous for all the historians: for those that are studying Accounting History there is the opportunity to search into the formal aspects and the accounting methodology of the registers, drawn up with a Tabular Lombard-type method (with two sections “Dare” or Debits and “Avere” or Credits, on either side of the same page), typical layout of the accounting systems in the 14th -15th centuries; and for those that are studying Socio-Political History there is the opportunity to obtain a large amount of
information concerning: the general structure of the noble court of Pandolfo III Malatesti; the political model enacted in the administration over the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, Lecco and their surrounding territory; the organizational model of the complex bureaucratic apparatus of the chancellery and treasury; the military organizational structure (and relative high expenses); and generally the court life and the identity of the artists, artisans, medical doctor and others present on the payrolls of the noble Lord they served.
In the final part of the paper are reported two specific examples of the contribution that accounting entries may make to historic investigations in the socio-political field: the considerable loan received by Pandolfo from the Republic of Venice in September 1409 and the conquest (or better, purchase) of the city of
Bergamo in June 1408.