Publication Date
Fall 1988
Abstract
The distinguished historian of medieval and Renaissance business history, Raymond Adrien Marie de Roover, first won recognition for scholarly excellence as an MBA student at Harvard University in 1938. The award was the James Bowdoin Graduate Prize, and his prize-winning essay was on the Florentine wool industry. Based on an examination of Medici family account books housed in the Harvard Library, the study epitomized the research methodology de Roover was to employ throughout his career: careful study and masterful interpretation of archival accounting records. The Bowdoin Prize, further, proved only the first of a battery of prizes and honors he was to receive over the years. In 1948, the American Historical Association awarded him its Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for his book The Medici Bank; in 1950 the Medieval Academy of America awarded him its Charles Homer Haskins Gold Medal for Money, Banking, and Credit in Mediaeval Bruges; and in 1966 Harvard University Press awarded him its Robert Troup Paine Award for The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494. He was elected a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts in 1952 and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1970. In 1969 he was knighted for his academic achievements by King Baudouin I of Belgium as a Knight Officer of the Order of the Crown.
Recommended Citation
Graves, Oliver Finley and Stevelinck, Ernest
(1988)
"Raymond De Roover (1904-1972) Business historian,"
Accounting Historians Notebook: Vol. 11:
No.
2, Article 11.
Available at:
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aah_notebook/vol11/iss2/11