During the last two decades, there has been growing interest in the history of mutualism. This interest has been fuelled, at least in part, by increasing scepticism over the capacity of the state to meet welfare needs, coupled with mounting concern over the seemingly inexorable rise in the costs associated with health care and pension provision. In Britain, this scepticism has been visible on both sides of the political spectrum. In 2010, the self-styled ‘Red Tory’, Philip Blond, claimed that the growth of the welfare state had ‘nationalised a previously mutual society and reframed it according to an individualised culture of universal entitlement’. His ‘Blue Labour’ counterpart, Maurice Glasman, has also complained that the foundation of the ‘classic’ welfare state after 1945 caused ‘universal benefit … to replace mutual responsibility as the basic principle of welfare’.

The chapters in this book are designed to help place some of this ferment of contemporary ideas in a more historical context. Almost all the chapters originated as papers which were either presented to a specially organized conference at the University of Southampton in April 2009 on ‘Insurance, Sickness and Old Age: Past Experiences and Future Prospects’, or during the World Economic History Congress later in the same year. We should like to thank the UK Economic and Social Research Council for supporting the first of these events, and the organizers of the World Economic History Congress for assistance with the second.