Carl Menger · 1903
Menger’s German review evaluates Espinas’s history of Douai’s municipal finances by distinguishing its legal contribution from its treatment of accounting. He attributes this uneven coverage to the surviving archival evidence.
The distinction qualifies the study’s achievement without dismissing it: legal institutions receive fuller illumination than financial accounting. Menger also emphasizes its comparative relevance for German readers, particularly its connections between Douai’s financial institutions and those of northwestern German towns and its engagement with German historical and financial scholarship. In praising this comparison, he writes that Espinas has:
die finanziellen Einrichtungen der Städte des nordwestlichen Deutschlands zur Vergleichung herangezogen und die deutsche Literatur (zumal die einschlägigen historischen und finanzwissenschaftlichen Werke) fleißig benutzt hat
English translation: has drawn upon the financial institutions of the towns of northwestern Germany for comparison and has diligently made use of the German literature (especially the relevant historical and public-finance works)
His assessment thus joins attention to documentary limits with appreciation of the wider significance of local municipal history.
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