Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Rossi on Insurance Law in Elizabethan England

Guido Rossi, University of Edinburgh, has published Insurance in Elizabeth England: The London Code with Cambridge University Press in its “Cambridge Studies in English Legal History” series. From the press:

Insurance in Elizabethan EnglandEnglish insurance came into being almost entirely during the Elizabethan period. However, the Great Fire of 1666 consumed most of London's mercantile document, and therefore little is known about early English insurance. Using new archival material, this study provides the first in-depth analysis of early English insurance. It focuses on a crucial yet little-known text, the London Insurance Code of the early 1580s, and shows how London insurance customs were first imported from Italy, then influenced by the Dutch, and finally shaped in a systematic fashion in that Insurance Code. The London Insurance Code was in turn heavily influenced by coeval continental codes. This deep influence attests the strong links between English and European insurance, and questions the common/civil law divide on the history of commercial law.

Here is the Table of Contents:

1. Introduction

Part I. Legal-Historical Background:

2. Some remarks on the origins of English insurance
3. Insurance in late sixteenth-century England

Part II. The London Code:

4. Preamble: sea-carriage and averages
5. The making of the London Code
6. Object of Insurance
7. Premium
8. The parties
9. Risks
10. Ship and voyage
11. Recovery
12. Abandonment to the insurers
13. Reinsurance
14. Life insurance

Concluding remarks.

Full information is available here.