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.

Robin Pearson is Professor of Economic History at the University of Hull, UK. He has published widely on various aspects of British and international economic and business history, with a particular focus on insurance. His first book, Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance and the British Economy, 1700–1850, won the 2004 Wadsworth Prize for Business History. He has recently finished a book, Shareholder Democracies? Corporate Governance in Britain and Ireland before 1850, co-authored with Mark Freeman (University of Glasgow) and James Taylor (Lancaster University), forthcoming with University of Chicago Press. He is currently working on a project entitled Insuring America: Multinational Insurance Companies in the United States, 1850–1920.