This short essay will be of interest to two groups of readers: those concerned with the future development of insurance law in the Republic of South Africa; and, secondly, those with their eyes on the history of insurance law in Europe.

Professor Van Niekerk has already written of the need for an historical approach to this branch of commercial law since the relatively recent reinstatement of Roman-Dutch law as the residual common law for insurance in the Cape and Orange Free State (in his monograph The Decline, Revival and Future of the Roman-Dutch Law of Insurance in South Africa, 1986). This new essay and collection of historical legislation on insurance law in the Low Countries from the 14th to the end of the 18th century is timely and usefully complements that earlier study. The substantial appendices to this study are likely to make available to many practitioners sources of insurance law which until now have been inaccessible.

The second group of readers—those with an academic interest in the history of European insurance law—may find some aspects of this introductory account a little narrow. Although Professor Van Niekerk states in the Introduction that an understanding of “the relationship between the various sources of Roman-Dutch insurance law and the influence which historical, political and in particular socio-economical factors had on the development of the system” is a necessary prerequisite to an examination of the principles of contemporary South African insurance law, nothing is said, for example, about development of actuarial techniques in the Low Countries during the period of the study. Nor is there much about the general growth of the corporation as a feature of commercial life in The Netherlands. But, on any footing, the essay is interesting and the extensive footnotes to periodical and other literature—from which this history is derived—are a valuable bibliographical guide to writing on the history of insurance in Europe.