Farm Accounts in Rural Europe, c.1700-1914

Analyses how book-keeping and estate accounting transformed attitudes and practices in farm management over three centuries of European history. From the eighteenth until well into the twentieth century, an ideal model developed of a farmer as accountant, who would record economic transactions meticulously; tidy book-keeping was regarded as the basis of sound management, and only those who accurately dealt with finances would survive and thrive. It is clear that this happened in both theory and