In june 2019 the first world congress on Risk and the Insurance Business in History was convened in Seville. The organisers believed that this field of history and finally reached a critical mass of scholars and experts who would benefit from participating in a large conference that could generate new intellectual synergies. The essays in this volume, selected from the contributions to this conference, are illustrative of some of the best new research in the field, the variety of its methodological approaches and its broad geographical scope.

Two essays explore, respectively, the issues confronting British and US life insurers trying to underwrite lives in foreign and colonial contexts during the nineteenth century. Two case studies of Canada and Switzerland examine fire and casualty insurance and state regulation in the long nineteenth century. Other essays examine the long-run impact of regulation on insurance markets and insurance industry and regulator responses to modern financial crises in Spain, France, Sweden, South Africa and the United States.