Note from Column Editor Anton Lewis: This column introduces a historical perspective on accounting’s potential to facilitate coercion and enhance subjugation—or, instead, to advance social justice.
Professor Adriana Rodrigues Silva’s research into the accounting of, and for, the Global South focuses on critical and interpretive explorations of past accounting practices and how they have all too often functioned as tools of state power, social control, and labor exploitation across the Lusophone world and, by extension, the Latin diaspora. Her work—grounded in archival analysis and accounting history—reveals how past accounting policy pressured enslaved and captive labor into compliance in an effort to sustain broader ideological projects of colonial and postcolonial dominance. Through studies published in leading journals, she has centered accounting’s less-heard voices, revealing how accounting knowledge molded racialized and subjugated labor, contributing to a deeper understanding of the socio-political foundations of Latin American accounting practice, past and present.
Accounting is sometimes described as a purely technical system designed to measure performance, allocate resources, and promote transparency. Yet historical evidence demonstrates that accounting also has structured systems of governance, labor control, and economic dependency, as seen in past accounting practice of the Global South, in particular Latin America. These historical episodes do not undermine the value of the profession. They clarify the scope of its influence. Revisiting this history is an opportunity to reflect on how technical practices interact with broader social realities and institutional power.
Governing Emancipation Through Calculation
In nineteenth-century Brazil, the transition from slavery to wage labor unfolded gradually through administrative reforms, legal measures, and financial mechanisms. One of the most significant instruments was the Slave Emancipation Fund, established in 1871 to finance the progressive liberation of enslaved individuals. The fund relied on detailed accounting procedures, including the collection of designated revenues, allocation formulas for provinces, classification lists of eligible individuals, and systematic documentation of compensation to former slaveholders.
Thus, accounting practice enabled the state to monitor emancipation territorially and financially (A. Rodrigues Silva, A. Vasconcelos, and T. A. Lira, “Accounting Inscriptions for the Exercise of Organizational Power: The Case of the Slave Emancipation Fund in Brazil,” RAE-Revista de Administração de Empresas, vol.61, no. 1, 2021). The system did more than record transactions. It structured who would be freed, when, and under what criteria. Eligibility depended on documented classifications, fiscal calculations, and formal listings. Freedom, in practice, became an administratively managed and financially mediated process. Accounting reports created visibility and order, yet they also framed emancipation within budgetary limits and bureaucratic definitions.
Accounting and Administrative Control
Other nineteenth-century institutions illustrate how accounting functioned as a mechanism of governance beyond the emancipation process. The tutelage system for so-called “Free Africans,” individuals liberated from intercepted slave ships, relied extensively on accounting records to document placements, labor outputs, expenses, and transfers between guardians. Through periodic reporting and centralized summaries, authorities exercised control across distance and ensured administrative oversight of dispersed populations (A. Rodrigues Silva, L. L. Rodrigues, and A. Sangster, “Accounting as a Tool of State Governance: The Tutelage System of ‘Free Africans’ in Brazil between 1818 and 1864,” Accounting History, v.24, no. 3, 2019).
Accounting transformed individuals into entries within standardized registers, making them visible to centralized authority. Classification systems enabled supervision and comparison, while documentation supported decisions regarding labor allocation and oversight. Similarly, at the Rio de Janeiro House of Correction, accounting records monitored the productivity and conduct of incarcerated and semi-coerced workers. Production data, cost tracking, and disciplinary notations reinforced institutional objectives and reflected prevailing social hierarchies (A. Rodrigues Silva, L. L. Rodrigues, and A. Sangster, “Accounting as a Tool of State Ideology to Control Captive Workers from a House of Correction,” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, v.33, no. 2, 2020). In these settings, accounting served to structure evaluation, categorize individuals, and support systems of discipline.
Contracts, Debt, and Migrant Labor
Following restrictions on the transatlantic slave trade, plantation owners increasingly turned to white European immigrant labor. Formally classified as free, many of these workers entered contractual systems binding them to plantations through advance payments and structured debt arrangements. Accounting ledgers recorded advances, charges for supplies, interest calculations, and profit-sharing agreements, producing detailed documentation of financial obligations. This was debt peonage in all but name, similar to sharecropping in America’s Antebellum South (A. Lewis, Counting Black and White Beans: Critical Race Theory in Accounting, Bingley, Emerald Publishing Limited, 2020).
On the Ibicaba coffee plantation, these accounting records documented obligations that often left poor, white immigrant workers in persistent indebtedness (A. Rodrigues and K. McBride, “Narratives of Exploitation and Resistance: European Immigration, Business, and Accounting on Ibicaba Farm in the 19th Century,” Business History, 2026, https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2025.2600471). The accounting system framed these arrangements as lawful contracts grounded in calculation and documentation. Nevertheless, personal testimonies from immigrant workers reveal disputes over transparency, pricing methods, and cumulative charges. Debt was constructed through “weaponized” accounting practices that shaped how obligations were defined and accumulated. The formal neutrality of numbers obscured asymmetries embedded in contractual design and informational access, fostering subjugation by design.
These historical developments demonstrate that accounting can shape labor relations even when legal status evolves. The transition from slavery to contract reconfigured dependency with-in financial structures and reporting systems. Accounting served as a mechanism through which labor relationships were formalized, monitored, and legitimized.
When Accounting Becomes Counter-Accounting
Accounting has also been mobilized in opposition to dominant economic systems. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Sociedade Contra o Tráfico de Africanos e Promotora da Colonização e Civilização dos Indígenas used financial reasoning to challenge slavery’s economic rationale. The association argued that slavery was economically inefficient and incompatible with national development. Rather than rejecting economic calculation, reformers used it to critique prevailing practices and advocate for wage-based labor arrangements [T. A. Lira, A. Rodrigues, and V. Pacheco, “Limits of Resistance: Counter-Accounting and Ideology in Brazilian Internal Colonialism (1849–1852),” forthcoming paper].
This example indicates that accounting does not have to be inherently aligned with domination or emancipation. It is a language capable of supporting multiple ideological positions. Financial arguments have long existed in Latin American accounting which were employed both to legitimize slavery and question its sustainability. Accounting rhetoric became a site of contestation, demonstrating that the profession’s tools can reinforce or challenge prevailing systems depending upon how they are applied.
Professional Implications
These historical cases do not imply equivalence between nineteenth-century institutions and contemporary practice. They do, however, underscore enduring lessons for the profession. Classification systems have consequences. Decisions about recognition, eligibility, measurement, and disclosure can influence how individuals and organizations are evaluated and treated. Transparency is shaped by system design, and compliance with formal standards does not automatically ensure equitable outcomes (Rodrigues and McBride 2026). Professional judgment operates within broader institutional frameworks that include legal regimes, labor markets, and economic incentives. Accounting standards and internal controls interact with social realities, shaping how performance, responsibility, and risk are defined. For CPAs, this history reinforces the importance of ethical awareness as well as technical competence. Accounting’s influence extends beyond financial statements and regulatory filings; it contributes to the governance structures within which businesses and public institutions operate.
The cases discussed here are part of a broader research agenda examining how accounting is operated within colonial administrations and labor systems in historically marginalized contexts, shaping both governance and economic life. They also demonstrate that accounting has not historically operated in a single direction. Recognizing this historical complexity encourages the profession to see accounting as both a technical instrument and a practice embedded in social and institutional environments. Such awareness strengthens the profession’s ability to navigate today’s global challenges with both technical rigor and ethical clarity.
