This article analyses the opportunities and incentives of 32 accountants, resident in four very different parts of the British Empire (Scotland, Ireland, India and Australia), to import an English accountancy qualification in the late 1870s and become in 1880 the first “English” chartered accountants outside England and Wales (EW). This “export” and “import” of qualifications is one way in which professional accountancy has spread around the world since the late nineteenth century. The opportunities arose as the Society of Accountants in England (SAIE), set up in London in 1872, challenged the prevailing localism and exclusivism, and as attitudes in EW towards the concept of “Englishness” within the UK and the Empire changed. From 1875 the SAIE opened its membership to accountants within the Empire outside EW. The incentives of these accountants to join the SAIE depended on whether or not a body already existed in their own locality, how exclusive the body was, and its status in comparison with an English qualification. The paper concludes with a study of the varied impact of the 32 on accountancy globally.
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