Purpose – There are two main alternative explanations in the literature for the patterns of financial reporting during the period of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR). Rob Bryer sees the new social relations of production in which manufacturing entrepreneurs strove to increase the...

Purpose – Changes in financial reporting information were an important part of the British transition from feudalism to capitalism, with statements showing cash surpluses or deficits being gradually superseded by income statements and balance sheets. The existing literature does not...

The wild boom and slump of 1845‐1847 was the most important of the nineteenth century railway manias, in terms both of its scale and effects on the economy as a whole. It has almost invariably been seen as a market irrationality, a view fundamentally challenged by Bryer’s theorisation of it...

Purpose – There are two main alternative explanations in the literature for the patterns of financial reporting during the period of the British Industrial Revolution (BIR). Rob Bryer sees the new social relations of production in which manufacturing entrepreneurs strove to increase the...

Purpose – Changes in financial reporting information were an important part of the British transition from feudalism to capitalism, with statements showing cash surpluses or deficits being gradually superseded by income statements and balance sheets. The existing literature does not...