Accounting for Natural Disasters: An Historical Perspective

In prior centuries, natural disasters have struck different territories, organisations and societies, thus challenging the existence of human beings, businesses, local, regional, national and global systems. Indeed, the rhythm of lives of prior centuries have been punctuated by the ‘sudden, rapid and destructive effects’ of natural disasters, like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, bushfires, floods, and volcanic eruptions. Regrettably, besides these, there are also natural ‘slow moving’ catastrophic events, such as droughts and epidemics (plague, cholera, typhoid fever, Spanish flu, and similar) which have marked the calendar of global history, provoking death tolls and economic and social impacts, which are certainly comparable – if not worse – than the current Covid-19 disaster. Suffice to say that in 1347–1351, although there are no exact figures, the bubonic plague provoked a death toll of around 200 million people, who were 30 per cent of the world population at the time. Indeed, in Europe the so-called ‘Black Death’ killed an estimated 25–30 million people and, for example, 60 per cent of Florence’s population died from the plague. Moreover, and in a related manner, it is worthy to note that often natural disasters are interconnected: for example, the US Dust Bowl in the mid-1930s unleashed plagues of jackrabbits and grasshoppers and triggered influenza, dust pneumonia, and lung diseases which often proved fatal. History is rich with evidence of natural disasters, however, to date, a few scattered studies in accounting history have closely examined the relationships between accounting and these catastrophic events. This special issue seeks for historical contributions that include, but are not limited to the following topics: