We analyse the history of slavery in Brazil from 1531 to 1888. Such a long analysis period yields instructive insights. Our objective is twofold: to reveal how the institution of slavery developed and was transformed through competing logics and ideology in a path dependent process; and to enhance understanding of how government accounting and taxation helped to institutionalize and reify slavery in Brazil. ‘Reify’ is taken to mean the subjugation and transformation of a person ‘into a commodity governed by ‘‘forces of the market” (Dallmayr, 1970; p. 127)’. The discourse in Brazil associated with government accounting and taxation established understandings through classifications and representations that were embodied in accounting records, scripts and schemas (Ezzamel, Robson, & Stapleton, 2012). Such devices commodified enslaved people as forms of property and situated them in a market-based realm where they could be bought and sold with little constraint (May, 2006). Such commodification corresponded with State ideology and with the interests of slave owners and the ruling elite (most of whom proclaimed slaves to be a physical necessity). In comparison to other slave-based societies in the Americas, slavery endured in Brazil for a longer period (from about 1531 to 1888) and involved more slaves. An estimated 4,009,400 African slaves disembarked in Brazil between 1531 and 1855 (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 2000). In the early decades of the nineteenth century, Great Britain applied strong pressure on Brazil to abolish the trade in slaves and slavery in all of its manifestations. This pressure had little practical effect. Between 1815 and 1888, de-reification was slowed by a structural inertia in government entities. This was facilitated by accounting and taxation rules that were embedded in Brazil’s institutional, legal and regulatory framework. We explore the logic and meaning of accounting in government action (Carmona, Ezzamel, & Gutiérrez, 1998) and how social practices, such as government accounting and taxation, were implicated in the re-production of organizational and social life (Englund, Gerdin, & Burns, 2011). Focusing on the texts of slavery that were associated with civil laws and government accounting and taxation enables us to highlight the logics responsible for reproducing the institution of slavery. To facilitate our analysis, we use an innovative theoretical framework which combines historical institutionalism (Steinmo, 2008; Thelen, 1999; Thelen & Steinmo, 1992), institutional logics (Thornton, 2002; Thornton & Ocasio, 1999; Thornton & Ocasio, 2008) and ideology (Thompson, 2013) to frame government accounting and taxation in the context of a slave-based society.