Taxes, which is a measure of operating profit of a company, may be feasible.72
However, a brief assessment of the interest payments in the year 1752 reveals that
interest payments can only roughly account for three percent of the MCC losses
in the profit and loss ledger for the year 1752 835:13:1 out of 25147:6:ii),73 and
it is unclear if and how taxes would be accounted for in the MCC books. Mehmet
Bulut suggests that early modern Dutch trading companies received privileges by
local governments, such as tax exemptions, as part of a mercantilist framework
to support exports.74
While, for instance, the MCC wharf is integrated formally, the gunpowder
mills owned by directors are an example of a business component which seems
to be integrated informally as a beneficiary of the MCC but would not appear in
the MCC bookkeeping as such. The MCC and the VOC chamber of Zeeland were
also at least financially linked through loans, suggesting an even more complex
global network. It may be appropriate to 'dissect' the company into its different
formal and informal components and to see which parts of the company were
'profitable, and to analyze the flow of money in and around the MCC.
However, we have also established that the MCC bookkeeping, like other ear
ly modern accounts, was not necessarily created for such precise cost-account
ing exercises.75 An Earnings Before Interest, Taxes estimation may be fruitless
for the MCC, grounded in an outdated Sombartian or Weberian framework. It
seems that the MCC's double-entry bookkeeping may have just served the pur
pose of creating accountability within the company and to shareholders, as Soll
would argue.76 The double-entry bookkeeping system, apart from its technical
utility, may have also served a rhetorical purpose, displaying the competence of
the company and its management to justify its ventures to shareholders.77 The
exact historical purpose of the accounting records remains unclear, but it seems
to have functioned primarily to create accountability and not to enable precise
calculations.
Koen van der Blij
187
72 Richard Barker, Short Introduction to Accounting Dollar Edition. Cambridge, 2011, 145-146.
73 ZA, MCC, 1720-1889, inv. nr. 1695. 1689-1709 Grootboek, 1720-1889. 21 delen, 1695. 'La G,
1749-1754 (NL-MdbZA_20_1695_0129).
74 Mehmet Bulut, Reconsideration of Economic Views of a Classical Empire and a Nation-Sta
te during the Mercantilist Ages. In: The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 68:3
(2009), 791-828, 806-810.
75 Chiapello, Accounting, 268-269.
76 Soll, The Reckoning, 207.
77 Carruthers and Espeland, 'Accounting for Rationality, 53-54.
