Anspach’s Summary of the Laws of Commerce and Navigation was the colony’s first home-grown compilation of law relating to commercial legal practice and may be regarded as Newfoundland’s first commercial law textbook. This transcription of the original is based on a first edition owned by former Chief Justice R. S. Furlong.

To situate Anspach’s Summary in context it is accompanied in this republication by transcriptions from the English statute volumes and handwritten court decisions from the Court Minute Books of the period.