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Set in the municipal archives of Braga, this article studies the accounting system and practices of the Monastery of Santa Ana, a female monastery located in a small town, Viana do Castelo, in the north of Portugal, during the eighteenth century. This work is a full-scale examination of the interlink between governance and accounting aspects of Benedictine organisations. It sheds light on the extent of management and administration that the female gender was able to exercise pertaining to a monastic order. The use of ‘displacement’ and ‘restraint’ concepts is pivotal to such exploration in the Monastery. The analysis of the accounting practices makes visible that large parts of its governance was embedded in social and internal accounting controls rather than the principal-agent type of relationship between the abbess, her auxiliaries and the monastery. Moreover, accounting practices help to appreciate the level of freedom of nuns that exceeded the actual freedom of a contemporary married woman.

The world is facing difficult, uncertain and challenging times, which have consequences for accounting practice, education and research. This new and uncertain environment may lead us to conclude that accounting research should focus on the present and develop answers to be implemented in the future. Does this mean that accounting history must be put aside for the moment? We start from the position that accounting history continues to matter and that accounting history researchers have developed their perspectives and methodological and theoretical approaches considerably since the early 1990s in terms of diverse fields and topics of research. This article aims to explore how accounting history research can expand by seeking innovation in theories, sources, methodologies and writing. It demonstrates that accounting history is not static and researchers can contribute to its further recognition and dissemination. Through the innovative study of the past, researchers may continue to contribute to new and informed ways for the world to be managed and governed.

As an extension of the Panel session held at the seventh Accounting History International Conference (7 AHIC) in Seville in September 2013, the pressures, issues, strategies and implications of the movement from regional to international in terms of publishing in accounting history are presented. These dimensions are analysed from the point of view of four European countries: France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Although these four countries have languages well disseminated around the globe, and/or possess a long history and tradition of discoveries and were strong players in commercial trade for centuries, academic publishing internationally is dominated by Anglo-Saxon countries and journals. Therefore, English is the main language and different challenges and hindrances are faced by researchers whose native language is other than English. More than arguing for a radical move from the regional to the international, a call is made for a more cooperative environment within international accounting history research which takes into account the cultural differences and embraces those differences.

Paralleling the advent of different conceptions of accounting in the past two decades or so is the distinction between what are now known as the “traditional” and “new” schools of accounting history research. Viewing accounting as a social practice, as opposed to a mere technical practice, orientates the historical researcher firmly into the arena of the new accounting history, which recognizes the pervasive and enabling characteristics of accounting and gives rise to concerns about studying the implications of accounting change on organizational and social functioning. This literature study examines the interplay of conceptions of accounting with schools of thought in the historical accounting literature. It seeks to enhance an understanding of the underlying connections between the conceptions of accounting embraced by researchers of contemporary accounting and the schools of thought adopted by historical accounting researchers. As the state of play in accounting history research appears to have become a little predictable, certain challenges are identified for accounting historians of the future.

Prior to the eighteenth century, commercial (including accounting) knowledge was acquired principally from on-the-job training and courses conducted in private schools. However, in eighteenth century Europe, the State began to participate directly in the provision of commercial (including accounting) education through the establishment of public schools of commerce.This article explores changes in commercial education in eighteenth-century Portugal and the role the state played in those changes. It attempts to falsify the claim that the Portuguese School of Commerce, established in Lisbon in 1759, was Europe’s first official, government-sponsored school to offer formal instruction in commerce, including in double-entry bookkeeping. The archival and literature searches conducted, and the various other enquiries we have made are such that we are unable to falsify the claim.The results point to the likelihood that the Portuguese School of Commerce was the first government sponsored business school in Europe.

This paper introduces to the English-language literature the Aula do Coméercio (School of Commerce) which was established in Lisbon in 1759. This school was a product of the Portuguese Enlightenment period and provided a model for development of similar government-sponsored schools across Europe. Our principal objective is to provide a comprehensive description of the school by outlining why it was established, how it operated, what it taught, what effects it had, and why it closed in 1844. It is important to gain an understanding of the School of Commerce because it was an important milestone in the development of commercial education in eighteenth century Europe. The School has attracted considerable notoriety, especially in the Portuguese-language literature, where it is claimed to be the world's first government-sponsored school to specialise in the teaching of commerce, including accounting.