Accounting History https://doi.org/10.1177/10323732211009907 Accounting History 2021, Vol. 26(2) 332–335 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/10323732211009907 journals.sagepub.com/home/ach Vale Basil S. Yamey Christopher J Napier Royal Holloway, University of London, UK Basil Selig Yamey, who died on 9 November 2020 at the age of 101 years, was a pioneer of histori- cal accounting research, contributing nearly a hundred books, book chapters, journal articles and other publications on accounting history. To put this into context, Basil wrote a further 150 publica- tions in applied economics, which was his main teaching and research activity through his aca- demic career. Basil was born on 4 May 1919 in Cape Town, the third son of Solomon Yamey (originally Jami) and Leah Yamey (née Halperin). His parents were born in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, and had emigrated to South Africa before the First World War. Basil grew up in Tulbagh, a town about 70 miles north of Cape Town, where his father owned a general store. He attended the local High School, gaining the highest marks in the whole of South Africa in the 1935 matricula- tion examinations. Basil then took the Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Cape Town. Among his teachers was William T Baxter, the Professor of Accounting. Although Basil originally planned to become an articled clerk after graduation, with a view to becoming a char- tered accountant, Baxter persuaded Basil to travel to London and begin a PhD under the supervi- sion of Arnold Plant, the Professor of Business Administration at the London School of Economics (LSE). Basil arrived in England on the Capetown Castle on 17 February 1939 and began work on his PhD at the LSE shortly after. 1 Basil’s thesis title was ‘Shareholders, accounting and the law’, and he made a substantial start on the thesis. His research formed the basis of his first scholarly contributions, a pamphlet for the Accounting Research Association The Functional Development of Double-Entry Bookkeeping (Yamey, 1940) and a study of British dividend law (Yamey, 1941). His research made extensive use of the collection of historical accounting treatises in the library of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). However, with the coming of the Second World War, it was not practical to continue work on the thesis, and Basil returned to South Africa and joined that country’s air force. Following the war, Basil began a teaching career, initially at Rhodes University College (now Rhodes University) and then working with Will Baxter at the University of Cape Town as Senior Lecturer in Commerce. When Will moved to the LSE in 1947, he per- suaded Basil to join him, and, except for a short period in Canada, Basil spent the rest of his aca- demic career at the LSE, being promoted to Professor of Economics in 1960. 2 Basil’s historical accounting research is diverse, though three main trends can be discerned. First, Basil challenged the argument that double-entry bookkeeping (DEB) was a necessary factor for the development of capitalism. His most cited accounting history publication ‘Scientific bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism’ (Yamey, 1949), which was based on published textbooks on DEB and on Corresponding author: Christopher J Napier, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK. Email: Christopher.Napier@rhul.ac.uk 1009907ACH 0 0 10.1177/10323732211009907Accounting HistoryNapier research-article 2021 Obituary