Despite their economic and social importance, there are relatively few book-length studies of national insurance industries. This collection of nine essays by a group of international experts redresses this balance; providing an extensive geographical and thematic spread, linked via an extensive introduction.

Introduction: Towards an International History of Insurance, RobinPearson; Chapter 1 The Marine Insurance Market for British Textile Exports to the River Plate and Chile, c. 1810-50, Manuel Llorca-Jaña; Chapter 2 Actuarial Practice, Probabilistic Thinking and Actuarial Science in Private Casualty Insurance, Christofer Stadlin; Chapter 3 The Difficulties of Spanish Insurance Companies to Modernize During the Franco Years: The Mechanization of Administrative Tasks and the Introduction of the First Computers, 1950-70, Jerònia Pons Pons; Chapter 4 Multilateral Insurance Liberalization, 1948-2008, Welf Werner; Chapter 5 Policyholders in the Early Business of Japanese Life Assurance: A Demand-Side Study, Takau Yoneyama; Chapter 6 Industrial Life Insurance and the Cost of Dying: The Role of Endowment and Whole Life Insurance in Anglo-Saxon and European Countries During the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Liselotte Eriksson; Chapter 7 From Economic to Political Reality: Forming a Nationalized Indian Life Insurance Market, Adrian Jitschin; Chapter 8 Life Offices to the Rescue! A History of the Role of Life Insurance in the South African Economy During the Twentieth Century, Grietjie Verhoef; Chapter 9 Competing Globalizations: Controversies Between Private and Social Insurance at International Organizations, 1900-60, Martin Lengwiler;