SEARCH FOR A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PORTUGUESE ACCOUNTING PRIOR TO THE FOUNDATION OF THE FIRST SCHOOL OF COMMERCE (1759)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to describe and go through some of the problems prior to the foundation, by the Marquis of Pombal, of the School of Commerce (1759), in Lisbon, the first institution in Portugal to instruct accounting education in an official, public and free way. Additionally, the study seeks to cover the historical, political and social origin of accounting and commercial education in Portugal, by going on a tour in the Portuguese eighteenth century. With the purpose to enable a framework of the origins of public accounting education in Portugal, with the intention to show the absence of conditions, before 1759, that could lead to the development of the national accounting, the research also aims to improve the understanding of the accounting environment adjacent to the prehistory of the first institute of accounting education in Portugal, the School of Commerce.