Includes bibliographical references (p. 1249-1258) and index.

Part I. Overview, methodology, formation and evolution of commercial promises -- 1. Guiding themes and content of this book -- 2. Methodology -- 3. The law of contracts in a pre-commercial or agricultural survival society -- 4. Roman law -- Part II. Medieval law: guilds, agents and notaries -- 5. Medieval law -- 6. Guilds and the capitalist system and Marxist legal systems -- 7. The Latin notariat and contemporary contracts -- Part III. European codification -- 8. The French 'code civil'; key politics and drafting method -- 9. The birth of a continental European commercial law; fair and commercial courts -- 10. The 'code de commerce' of 1808 -- 11. Socio-economic context of Germany's civil and commercial codes -- 12. The codification of the German civil and commercial codes -- 13. Customs, usages and other sources of commercial contract law in German and other representative codes -- Part IV. Familistic and socialist variants of the civil law -- 14. Latin American codification and its all-important colonial background -- 15. Soviet commercial contract law -- 16. The peculiar meaning of Soviet and post-Soviet commercial contracts: an invertebrage legal system -- 17. Chinese imperial, mostly living-law of contracts -- 18. Contracts and litigation in imperial and Mao's China -- 19. Contemporary land contracts, third parties and judicial law making -- Part V. Anglo-American law -- 20. Socio-economic and legal contexts and English commercial contracts -- 21. The socio-economic and legal contexts of U.S. commercial contracts -- Part VI. Formation, interpretation and adjudication of contractual and customary law disputes -- 22. Formation of contracts: ceremony or conduct? -- 23. Two guiding principles for the interpretation of commercial contracts: good faith and reasonableness -- 24. Drafting commercial practices and the growth of commercial contract law -- 25. Brief overview of commercial trial procedure -- 26. Pre-contractual liability: culpa in contrahendo -- 27. Excuses for non-performance of contracts -- 28. Extrajudicial remedies and the remedy of specific performance -- 29. Judicial and extrajudicial termination -- 30. Damages for breach of warranty in U.S. economic analysis influenced law.