2010/05/01 by Philip A. Talbot · 2 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Accounting and Organizational Management
paper · doi:10.1177/1032373209359332
openalex publication_date 2010/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
In “Genealogies of Calculation”, Miller and Napier (1993) engaged with the alternative boundaries of calculation beyond traditional accounting histories. This was justified because not all forms of calculation are to be found in accounting. The removal of this accounting limitation encouraged investigation into other calculative technologies in order to widen the accounting history agenda. This challenge is now taken up through the genealogical examination of the mutation of political arithmetic into statistics and then as accounting statistics as employed by the British military and its relationship with the British brewing industry. In particular, the focus is on the work of Colonel William Henry Sykes, a seminal member of the early Victorian Statistical Movement with his statistical accounting analysis of the British and French Armies of 1864 and later employment of this technique in the financial management of the Bass Rifle Volunteers.