‘American Bookkeeping’ in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries which was not American

This article conducts a study of the circumstances surrounding an 'invention' by Edmond Degrange père in 1804 which was said to be 'American'. Degrange sought to simplify double-entry bookkeeping by combining the journal and ledger on a single page. Based on a review of the curious follow-on literature, first in Belgium and then also in Italy, France and particularly in Germany, which labelled this invention as 'American', even though no American had anything to do with it and it was unknown in the USA, we speculate why a French 'invention' was labelled as 'American'.