This book answers the need for a contextual, long-term and interpretative analysis of risk from original sources. Risk has historically been a way of imagining what could happen in the future based on expert theories and predictions. This book explores this notion of "managing the future" by tracing the conceptual development of risk from its origin in Islamic Koranic theology. It follows its long voyage from mercantile law and navigation in Medieval Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, to Columbus' arrival to the Indies and the Spanish exploration and colonization in the Americas. It considers the mathematical invention of probability in games of chance, the birth of journalism in Britain with Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 and the subsequent controversy between apocalyptic believers and enlightened philosophers. Tracking the growth and evolution of risk as a concept across various historical periods and events, Mairal highlights four key features of risk - time, knowledge, relationship and probability - and argues that risk is not based on perception as it is generally presented, but rather on knowledge accrued and developed over a vast historical time frame. A Pre-Modern Cultural History of Risk will be of great interest to students and scholars of risk management.

How did "innovation" become something to strive for, an end in itself? And how did "the market" come to be thought of as the space of innovation? This edited volume provides the first historical examination of how innovations are conceived, marketed, navigated and legitimated from a global perspective that highlights contrasting experiences. These experiences include: colonial "projecting" in the Dutch New Netherlands, trust networks in the early US securities market, female investors during the Financial Revolution, life insurance in nineteenth-century France, "bubbles" and trusts in 1920s Shanghai, government regulation of the pre-Revolutionary stock market and the checkered success of today’s bit-coin technology. By discussing these diverse contexts together, this volume provides a pathbreaking reconsideration of market and business activities in light of both the techniques and the emotional vectors that infuse them.

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Across Europe, the Early Modern period was marked by political, religious and cultural upheaval, and saw the emergence of the first global economy, developments which profoundly impacted how people shopped and what they were able to buy. This volume engages with the key debates around continuity and change in consumer behavior in the 'long 16th century' and the ways in which shopping became an educational and exciting act for many women, men and children across the social spectrum: shops and market stalls were filled with an increasingly wide range of goods made by skilled craftspeople and transported by merchants making evermore ambitious and lucrative journeys across the world. Even servants and the poor were exposed to these new things, for they could consume by eye and ear what they could not afford to take home in material form. Although they did not yet have a word for the activity of “shopping,” in this period men and women came to understand that this activity was more than a functional act to acquire necessities. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries form a very distinctive period in European food history. This was a time when enduring feudal constraints in some areas contrasted with widening geographical horizons and the emergence of a consumer society.While cereal based diets and small scale trade continued to be the mainstay of the general population, elite tastes shifted from Renaissance opulence toward the greater simplicity and elegance of dining à la française. At the same time, growing spatial mobility and urbanization boosted the demand for professional cooking and commercial catering. An unprecedented wealth of artistic, literary and medical discourses on food and drink allows fascinating insights into contemporary responses to these transformations. A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.

A Cultural History of Chemistry in the Early Modern Age covers the period from 1500 to 1700, tracing chemical debates and practices within their cultural, social, and political contexts. This era in the history of chemistry was notable for natural philosophy, scientific discovery, and experimental method, and also as the high point of European alchemy - exemplified by the immensely popular writings of Paracelsus. Developments in the chemistry of metallurgy, medicine, distillation, and the applied arts encouraged attention to materials and techniques, linking theoretical speculation with practical know-how. Chemistry emerged as an academic discipline - supported by educational texts and based in classroom and laboratory instruction – and claimed a public place. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Chemistry presents the first comprehensive history from the Bronze Age to today, covering all forms and aspects of chemistry and its ever-changing social context. The themes covered in each volume are theory and concepts; practice and experiment; laboratories and technology; culture and science; society and environment; trade and industry; learning and institutions; art and representation. Bruce T. Moran is Professor of History and University Foundation Professor (emeritus) at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA. Volume 3 in the Cultural History of Chemistry set. General Editors: Peter J. T. Morris, University College London, UK, and Alan Rocke, Case Western Reserve University, USA.

Drawing together scholars with a wide range of expertise across the early modern period, this volume explores the rich field of early modern comedy in all its variety. It argues that early modern comedy was shaped by a series of cultural transformations that included the emergence of the entertainment industry, the rise of the professional comedian, extended commentaries on the nature of comedy and laughter, and the development of printed jestbooks. It was the prime site from which to satirize a rapidly-changing world and explore the formation of new social relations around questions of gender, authority, identity, and commerce, amongst others. Yet even as it reacted to the novel and the new, comedy also served as a receptacle for the celebration of older social rituals such as May games and seasonal festivities. The result was a complex and contested mix of texts, performances, and concepts providing a deep tradition that abides to this day. Each chapter takes a different theme as its focus: form, theory, praxis, identities, the body, politics and power, laughter and ethics. These eight different approaches to early modern comedy add up to an extensive, synoptic coverage of the subject.

This open access book explores the history of risk management in medieval and early modern European maritime business, focusing particularly on 'General Average' – a mechanism by which extraordinary expenses regarding ship or cargo, incurred during a voyage to save the venture, are shared between all participants to protect equity. This volume traces the history of this risk management tool from its origins in the pre-Roman Mediterranean through to its use in the shipping sector today. Contributions range from the Islamic Mediterranean to the Low Countries, and taken together, provide a wide-ranging analysis of social, cultural, and political aspects of pre-modern maritime commerce in Europe.