Contents

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Introduction

1 How to Tame Chance: Evolving Languages of Risk, Trust, and Expertise in Eighteenth-Century German Proto-Insurances

2 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s Work on Insurance

3 The Slave’s Appeal: Insurance and the Rise of Commercial Property

4 Fire, Property Insurance, and Perceptions of Risk in Eighteenth-Century Britain

5 A Licence to Bet: Life Insurance and the Gambling Act in the British Courts

6 ‘The Rules of Prudence’: Political Liberalism and Life Assurance in the Nineteenth Century

7 Honesty, Fidelity, and Insurance in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England

8 Competing Appeals: The Rise of Mixed Welfare Economies in Europe, 1850–1945

9 Employers and Industrial Accident Insurance in Spain, 1900–1963

10 Five Ironies of Insurance