A Pre-Modern Cultural History of Risk: Imagining the Future

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...