1 SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIENTATIONS AND VOLUME OF ACCOUNTING HISTORY RESEARCH IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Taking as starting point the 8th World Congress of Accounting Historians this paper attempts to identify the orientations followed by accounting history research in the first years of the 21st century, that is, from 2000 up to 2007. The main purpose of the attempt is to find out whether there have been significant novelties in the directions of research or, on the contrary, its development has run in the foreseeable course. We shall try to associate this purpose to the study of the amount of related research published in the main accounting journals. After having examined and described the developments of accounting history research in the first years of present century, the paper presents some considerations on the directions in which research should move in the next future. To do this I have taken into account the main papers on the state of the art published in the period studied and above all examined carefully papers published in journals specifically or mainly devoted to accounting history, that is, Accounting Historians Journal, Accounting, Business an