Geoffrey Clark is a professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York at Potsdam.Gregory Anderson is the former Associate Head of the Business School at the University of Salford.Christian Thomann is a senior fellow at the Centre for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University, Hanover.J.-Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg is the Director of the Centre for Risk and Insurance at Leibniz University, Hanover.

• Introduction by Geoffrey Clark (State University of New York at Potsdam) and Gregory Anderson (Salford University) How to Tame Chance: Evolving Languages of Risk, Trust and Expertise in 18th-century German Proto-Insurances by Eve Rosenhaft (University of Liverpool)Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Work on Insurance by J.-Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg (Leibniz University) and Christian Thomann (University of Alabama)The Slave’s Appeal: Insurance and the Rise of Commercial Property by Geoffrey ClarkFire, Property Insurance and Perceptions of Risk in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Robin Pearson (University of Hull)A License to Bet: Life Insurance and the Gambling Act in the British Courts by Timothy Alborn (Lehman College, City University of New York)‘The rules of prudence’: political liberalism and life assurance in the nineteenth century by Liz Mcfall (The Open University)Honesty, Fidelity and Insurance in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England by Gregory Anderson (University of Salford)Competing Appeals: the rise of mixed welfare economies in Europe, 1850-1945 by Martin Lengwiler (University of Zurich)Employers and Industrial Accident Insurance in Spain (1900-1963) by JerÒnia Pons Pons (University of Seville) Five Ironies of Insurance by Aaron Oyle (University of Ottawa) and Richard Ericson (University of Toronto)