Agronomists and accounting. The beginnings of capitalist rationalisation on the farm (1800-1850)

Thomas Depecker and Nathalie Joly
Additional contact information
Thomas Depecker: National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA, France)
Nathalie Joly: National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA, France)

Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural, 2015, issue 65, 75-94

Abstract: At the dawn of the nineteenth century numerous debates took place on the development of capita-list agriculture and the ways of making as much profit as possible from farm land. Until now this subject has hardly been examined and is unique in that it pertains to the economic history of agriculture, the history of agronomy and the history of managerial thinking. This article aims to highlight the usage of double-entry accounting for agronomic experiments in the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the significance of the results and the way these were debated. Our aim is to present the authors’ reasons and the role played by bookkeeping in the construction of economically rational knowledge and reasoning. Thus we will bring to light two mechanisms which are common to this accounting quantification drive: data tabulation and the inclusion of data in balance sheets, making it possible to compare inputs and outputs in production processes.

Keywords: agronomists; double-entry accounting; farmers’ economic thought; farm management; rural accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B12 B30 M49 N53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10 ... quence=1&isAllowed=y (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:seh:journl:y:2015:i:65:m:april:p:75-94

Access Statistics for this article

Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural is currently edited by Vicente Pinilla

More articles in Historia Agraria. Revista de Agricultura e Historia Rural from Sociedad Española de Historia Agraria Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vicente Pinilla ().