The market of Amsterdam – if we fall under the spell of the graphic accounts of Jean-Pierre Ricard and Jacques Accarias de sérionne – was a place of pervasive vitality. Like all centres of trade and finance, the daily round of dealings enlivened an ever-alert concourse of merchants as much in the ebb and flow of business as their entry and exit from the market itself. Yet, however scintillating that activity may have been to observers at the time, the full study of insurance rates seems to carry the badge of all price history: the information available is partial. The problem has already been raised in Chapter 4. Apart from the hanging attendance in the market, which varied from day to day and from season to season, the documents themselves are not all they should be. When archives are ready to disgorge prices, they seldom see fit to divulge data on the quantities of commodities or services bought and sold. And all too often promising series are pock-marked with missing lists.

The Amsterdam prijscouranten, indeed, are no exception to these shortcomings. The archive is not specifically for insurance, as in the case of the Maatschappij van Assurantie of Rotterdam; and records price not quantity. In the same style, the Kamer van Assurantie in Amsterdam was primarily concerned with settling claims, not predicting risks.