The Italian and Iberian Influence in Accounting History provides compelling evidence of how accounting, when conceived of as a technology rather than simply as a tool to increase efficiency, can work as a means to sustain power relations in different sites, such as the Church, the State or the factory.

This book, drawing upon the growing body of work which focuses on Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, demonstrates how accounting practices were effective in the subjugation of single individuals or entire populations, whether Roman Catholic priests, State functionaries,...