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There is an on-going debate among scholars from various disciplines about economic institutions and their impact on economic development. The case of the Amsterdam Chamber of Insurance is relevant to this discussion and in particular to the part that focuses on the nature and development of contract enforcement mechanisms. Marine insurance was introduced in Amsterdam in the mid-sixteenth century and soon the insurance industry developed into a prospering business. Its development was of great importance to the expansion of long-distance trade as it reduced the financial consequences of risks inherent to maritime trade. However, the new industry with its complex contracts was prone to misunderstandings, fraud and deception, creating the need for an independent, specialised court. The Chamber of Insurance was established as a generalised court, rather than a particularised court as was the case in cities that preceded Amsterdam’s trade dominance. Why did the Amsterdam municipality choose to set up this court and what were the implications? A recently discovered Statute Book of the Chamber gives insight into why the Chamber was established, how it functioned within the setting of Europe’s dominant trade centre and how it has affected the development of similar courts in the Netherlands.

In Navigating History: Economy, Society, Knowledge, and Nature the contributors present new research that touches on the core themes developed in Karel Davids's work. The book reflects Davids's omnivorous character as a scholar. Nevertheless, there are common strands that run throughout the introduction and fourteen chapters gathered here. Major themes include resources of knowledge, cultures of learning, and humans and their natural environment. Together, these fourteen essays provide a fascinating panorama of social, economic, and environmental history of the past millennium. The book seeks to bring back the different levels of geographical scope, fusing the local, the national and the global. Contributors are: Ulbe Bosma, Pepijn Brandon, Jaap Bruijn, Petra van Dam, Victor Enthoven, Sabine Go, Marjolein 't Hart, Raoul De Kerf, Jan Lucassen, Karin Lurvink, Joel Mokyr, Marijn Molema, Bert de Munck, Pál Nyiri, Harm Pieters, Matthias van Rossum, Joost Schokkenbroek, Jeroen Touwen, Wybren Verstegen, and Jan Luiten van Zanden.

Marine insurance has been of great importance to the expansion of long distance trade and economic growth in the early modern period, in particular for seafaring nations such as the Dutch Republic. The Amsterdam market became Europes leading insurance market and within the Republic other insurance systems also emerged. Little is known about the differing institutional frameworks governing these industries and the interaction between the institutions and the actors in the industry.

In Navigating History: Economy, Society, Knowledge, and Nature the contributors present new research that touches on the core themes developed in Karel Davids's work. Major themes include resources of knowledge, cultures of learning, and humans and their natural environment. Together, these fourteen essays provide a fascinating panorama of social, economic, and environmental history of the past millennium.

Having analysed the financial innovative mutual insurances in the province of Groningen and the disparity between formal and informal institutions and the consequences for the actors in Amsterdam, my analysis of the marine insurance industry now focuses on Rotterdam and more specifically on the formal and informal institutions governing the insurance market and influencing the actors in the industry. Until the nineteenth century, Rotterdam was surpassed by its peer at the IJ in many ways. Did the insurance market evolve in a similar way to what we see in Amsterdam or did the size of the business bring about other

Marine insurance, now a common aspect of corporate risk management, emerged and developed during the Early Modern Period and played a crucial role in the expansion of long-distance trade. Amsterdam, the largest and dominant insurance market, has received most scholarly attention. However, outside Amsterdam’s direct sphere of influence, in the Republic’s northern province of Groningen, an alternative form of marine insurance was developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: mutual insurance boxes. These boxes were affiliated with skippers’ guilds, and emerged early in the seventeenth century. Their development is of importance, not only because they originated earlier than was previously

Amsterdam as a centre of trade, and as the heart of the financial world, with its dominant staple market, has been elaborately researched, as has the economic development of the Dutch Republic in general.¹ For the purpose of this research I base my analysis on a number of recent studies which are directly relevant to our central issue. In order to understand the developments during this period – impressive growth and expansion during the first half of the seventeenth century, followed by a period of stagnation after 1650, revival during the second quarter of the eighteenth century and finally decline until