The law of international trade is notoriously difficult to define, due to the diversity of its sources in shipping law, insurance law, sales law, banking law and conflicts law. An international trade student textbook needs to address not only some very difficult legal issues but also faces a problem of definition—what to include, what to omit, what to treat in depth, what to treat in outline. The problem is compounded by the fact that the boundaries of the subject will differ somewhat from course to course. How successful, then, is Chuah’s International Trade at overcoming these difficulties and providing the student with a suitable textbook?

The text starts with a lengthy introduction which first reiterates the basic principles of English contract law on express and implied terms and then provides some basic economic analysis of the phenomenon of international trade. Having dispensed with these preliminary matters, Chuah then provides a reasonable introduction to the law of carriage of goods by sea, although concepts such as the bill of lading and the Hague-Visby Rules are introduced without sufficient explanation as to what they mean and why they are so important. The detail then snowballs as the introduction moves on to carriage by road, rail and air. These parts should be in the substantive text and not in an introduction. What is lacking is a straightforward outline of how the sale contract, the carriage contract, the insurance contract, the letter of credit contract all interact in a typical international trade transaction and why the bill of lading is so central to the parties concerned with these interconnecting contracts.

The text then moves on to chapters on sales, carriage, insurance, banking and conflicts of laws. The carriage chapters are a good illustration of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the work. Chuah provides some stimulating discussion of issues such as unseaworthiness and in particular the difficulty of reconciling The Apostolis [1997] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 241 (C.A.) with Maxine Footwear Co. Ltd v. Canadian Government Merchant Marine Ltd [1959] A.C. 589 (P.C.). There is also an admirably clear exposition of both the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1971 and the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1992, which would give a student a good overview of how cargo claims are dealt with under English law. However, there is something of an imbalance in the treatment of topics. The issue of safe ports is extensively canvassed and yet laytime and demurrage receive very patchy treatment. Issues relating to the notice of readiness are given good coverage, in particular the decisions in The Mexico 1 [1990] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 507 (C.A.) and The Petr Schmidt [1997] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 284 (Q.B.) (now aff’d [1998] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 1 (C.A.)), yet no mention is made of laytime exceptions or of the maxim “once on demurrage, always on demurrage”. Time charters are almost completely overlooked, as is the sea waybill. This may be understandable, given constraints of space, but it would have been helpful had the text stated somewhere what was being omitted and why.

This pattern is repeated throughout the work. Another example is provided by the chapters on jurisdiction, choice of law and arbitration. These are very welcome additions to the substantive law