Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 A dream of future wealth
- 1 Income and outcome
- 2 Fool's gold
- 3 Play the game
- 4 The judgment of balance
- 5 Return to reality
- 6 The cost of success
- 7 Profit and cash
- 8 Time to take stock
- 9 A capital asset
- 10 Mind your own business
- 11 The taxonomy of fog
- 12 The Merchant of Florence
- Part 2 The hidden art of management
- Appendix 1 Mathematical anchor
- Appendix 2 Getting to grips with cash
- Postscript
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Fool's gold
from Part 1 - A dream of future wealth
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 A dream of future wealth
- 1 Income and outcome
- 2 Fool's gold
- 3 Play the game
- 4 The judgment of balance
- 5 Return to reality
- 6 The cost of success
- 7 Profit and cash
- 8 Time to take stock
- 9 A capital asset
- 10 Mind your own business
- 11 The taxonomy of fog
- 12 The Merchant of Florence
- Part 2 The hidden art of management
- Appendix 1 Mathematical anchor
- Appendix 2 Getting to grips with cash
- Postscript
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In 1542, encouraged by the exploits of Jacques Cartier, the flamboyant and opportunistic Jean-Francois de La Roque, Sieur de Roberval, sailed from France under the sponsorship of King Francois I, bound for a rendezvous with the famous explorer. He met the homeward-bound Cartier in Newfoundland and continued upstream on the St. Lawrence River to Cap-Rouge near present-day Quebec City. Here, along with a motley crew composed largely of French convicts, he established a fledgling colony which he named ‘France Roy’, on the river which he dubbed ‘France-Prime’.
Roberval's forays upstream to the Lachine Rapids at Montreal and downstream to the land of the Saguenay were motivated more by tales of gold and diamonds than by geographical curiosity. But shipwrecks, winter cold, famine and disease quickly drove the would-be colonists back to France. After less than a year in Canada, de Roberval and his sickened, querulous crew sailed back to France on rescue ships provided by the King. Hopes for a new French kingdom faded, along with the value of de Roberval's ‘precious stones’, found to be worthless quartz and iron pyrites.
Great Canadian RiversThe voyage of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 triggered European colonisation of the New World and spawned many subsequent embarkations, each of which carried its own financial demands. Can the hidden accounting code in Pacioli's great book of 1494 therefore help us to understand the financial consequences of a subsequent adventure, Roberval's voyage up the St Lawrence river of Canada, undertaken in 1542?
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- Information
- Financial Management for BusinessCracking the Hidden Code, pp. 13 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010