The Research On Manor Accounting's Development And Economic Environment In Medieval Western Europe

During the Middle Ages, Western Europe practiced the enfeoffment vassal system and the mound system, which let the medieval Western European manorial economy have a unique status and characteristics in the history of European economic development. Manor accounting as an accounting system,was produced and developed by being based on manorial economy. Feudal manor was a basic administrative unit of economic organization, which had a set of political, economic and judicial powers, and was independent of the national political system, almost was free from the constraints of national legislation. In the last of Middle Ages, when manorial agricultural technology rose quickly, business economy was recovered and in the making on the manor lands, manorial economy promoted quickly, thus the development of medieval Western European manor accounting appeared qualitative leap. There were great changes in the accounting objectives, accounting organizations, accounting bookkeeping skills and so on. Accounting development is always linked to economic development, doing research on economic background of medieval Western European manor accounting, which is very important to understand the different outcomes of accounting development between China and Western Europe, also is very important to understand the factors of affecting the development of modern accounting.Basing on referring lots of papers on researching the development of Western bookkeeping skills, the article explains in detail about Western European manor accounting's major aspects in the Middle Ages, through using of historical materialism, two-fold evidence, and comparative analysis; At the same time, it analyzes the differences of manor accounting from objectives, structure, methods between the Middle Ages and the Ancient Times in the Western Europe. In order to explore the impact of accounting development caused by economic development, the article analyzes the characteristics of medieval Western European manorial economic development from several parts, including agricultural technology, farming systems, business economic forms, even taking a compare with Chinese feudal peasant economy. The results show that there are great differences in the inside of economic forms, the economic regulating power of feudal central government and business philosophies. I think just these differences in economic environment lead to different developing path between Chinese accounting bookkeeping and Western European accounting bookkeeping; And, through the manor accounting research in Medieval Western Europe,We can conclude that the economic technology, the government's regulation to economic and economic ideology are the main factors that economic development affecting accounting development.