Insurance History

The book studies trade and navigation at a global scale in the XV and XVI centuries based on an analysis of maritime insurance in Castile, a perspective which has hitherto scarcely been addressed by historiography. The author draws on research into numerous documents, prominent amongst which is the information contained in close to 20,000 insurance policies taken out in the aforementioned two centuries and which have been conserved in Spanish and foreign archives, particularly in the large Burgos exchange house. The various parts of the book examine the legal characteristics of maritime insurance, together with those related to reinsurance and life insurance. In addition, an analysis is provided of the various types of ships, as well as both the main and secondary routes, the volume and value of the cargo transported, the names and origin of those involved (ship-owners, merchants, shipping agents, commission agents…), the events and conflicts to emerge and how these were dealt with, the financial world of insurance and how insurance prices evolved. What results is a description of a vast maritime landscape revolving around the Iberian Peninsula, stretching from the Baltic to the Island of Chios, through Newfoundland, Latin-America, Africa and Asia, and which helps us to reconstruct the trade and port networks of the time. It also enables us to study another aspect of the finances of the Spanish Monarchy. In sum, it provides further insights into the economic and maritime history of Europe.

The topography of the state’s wealth can be mapped through the architecture of Sydney’s Martin Place. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the financial industry was lured by the architectural promise of a new George Street civic square defined by the 1874 colonnade of the General Post Office (GPO) and its stately neighbors across the New York.  These august institutions formed the precinct’s first cluster of prestigious architecture. In the coming decades, distinctive groupings of financial industry buildings followed, each illustrating the ideals of power, prestige and architectural planning of their era. This essay identifies and explores three architectural clusters selected for aesthetic commonalities; the contributions and social detractions each made to the emerging civic decorum of Martin Place; their impact on urban street life and the role of their architecture in projecting the image and ideals of their commissioning institutions.

This paper studies fishing in Newfoundland during the second half of the sixteenth century. It analyses 415 maritime insurance contracts, all of which were registered at the Burgos Consulate, which was then one of the major insurance centres in Spain. We analyse the main characteristics of the journeys undertaken: price, danger, function, routes, origin of ships and sailors, etc. Furthermore, the surviving documentation (10,397 contracts) also allows us to reconstruct 4,372 maritime expeditions between 1565 and 1619. These data have allowed us to observe that the masters, owners and sailors who undertook fi shing expeditions to Newfoundland also engaged in international trade. Fishing and trade were complementary activities and ships did not specialise in one or the other. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish, Portuguese and French fleets were very versatile and sought to diversify their activities and, thereby, reduce risk.

The Lloyd´s List, a London-based global business newspaper, was established in the
beginning of the eighteenth century. Its main focus were global shipping movements,
other maritime news, and reports about wrecks and casualties. With such news, shipowners,
merchants and insurance companies back in London achieved a better understanding
of the location of both their ships and goods. The precise information about
the location, route, and load of a ship were the most vital parts of the List. As one of
the oldest newspapers (some say it is the oldest) the Lloyd´s List provides a unique
insight into maritime history in general and also provides us with links to other source
material. This article will give a short overview of the history, the different parts of the
Lloyd’s List and especially the role of information.

Reinsurance in a Closed Economy. The Activity of the Warta Company in the Years 1949–1956
(Summary)
The article is based on documents concerning the Warta Reinsurance Company
and the ministries supervising it. The author intended to discover the
reasons why at a time when the Polish economy was closed the state authorities
decided that enterprises dealing with reinsurance should continue to exist
and maintain trade contacts with their Western counterparts, and to fi nd out
how the objectives of reinsurance activity were defi ned in an economy aiming
at autarchy. Moreover, the purpose of the article is to describe the grounds decisive
for the range of benefi ting from reinsurance protection and the form of
reinsurance contracts.
Warta was part of a competitive international market and, at the same
time, found itself under strict state control. Hence, the article also considers
the limits of the company’s autonomy and its possible impact on the decisions
made by the authorities. The necessity of realising tasks designated by the
state comprised a risk factor. The author discusses the strategies applied by
the fi rm for reducing this hazard.
Mariusz Jastrząb – Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego, Warszawa;
e-mail: jastrzab@kozminski.edu.pl

The concept of risk acquires different meanings depending on the context and it tends to change over time. Only in the late medieval age, with the growth of trade, did risicum – intended as a fortuitous event – become an element that businessmen would take into account and protect themselves against, in order to preserve the profitability of their investments. It is in this framework, and more specifically in maritime transport, that insurance was first developed, as a tool transferring voyage risk, in part or in full, to third parties against payment of a premium. However, within maritime commerce, there is another institution, general average, with much older origins, and designed to better cope with the perils involved with maritime adventure. Its function could be defined as complementary to insurance.
This work aims to investigate the evolution of general average and insurance regulations and procedures in Genoa, as well as the ways in which they intersected, with a view to fully understanding the mechanisms for managing maritime trade risks from the late Middle Ages to the early modern age.

This paper analyses trade and navigation between Europe and Africa with America by using documents that have not been much studied until now: 2,119 marine insurance contracts that are held at the Archivo del Consulado in Burgos (Spain). These document trade and navigation in the above-mentioned routes between 156.5 and 1598. In particular, this paper analyses 893 contracts that deal with the trade of the "Carrera de Indias". We study their main characteristics, price, types of ships used, and participants. Our analysis allow us to conclude that 16th marine insurance covering American routes were mainly signed in Burgos and not in Sevilla.

This book is a contribution to the scholarly engagement with the wider problem of governing through risk and the politics of uncertainty. It takes life insurance as an empirical site from which to ask: what is the kind of governance created through insurance an instance of, and how does it contribute to the transcendence of liberalism? By making a distinction between capable life as object of insurance, and potential life as that which escapes its control, the book conducts a historical epistemological analysis of the problems of valuation, truth production, securitisation, classification, and gendering that constitute life insurance products and practices.

Insuring Life offers a critical engagement with the epistemology of life insurance to demonstrate the unnecessary and precarious character of the conditions that make this instrument of liberal governance possible. It concludes that the transcendence of liberalism relies on the technological agency of these instruments and that its challenge begins by redefining the terms under which the potential of life, if invaluable, is to be thought as event.

The book follows Insuring War as the third of a trilogy that analyses how concepts and practices of power, risk and security materialise in the form of insurance as a central instrument of governance in the liberal world. It will be of great use to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students of political economy, critical security studies and political theory, the biopolitics of security and post-structural politics.

L’istituto assicurativo rappresenta un aspetto di non secondaria importanza che ha mosso i traffici marittimi nel Mediterraneo dall’antichità ad oggi. L’assicurazione nasce per il mare e sul mare si evolve. Essa rispondeva alle richieste di un mercato che con l’apertura dei commerci d’oltreoceano diventava sempre più esigente e allo stesso tempo più rischioso. Il Regno di Napoli, già dal XVI secolo vide consolidare i suoi affari commerciali che si svolgevano prevalentemente attraverso il porto della Capitale. Un porto che, alla stregua di altri grandi mercati, come Ragusa, Ancona e Messina, era considerato una tappa fondamentale nel sistema-Mediterraneo. L’istituto assicurativo, tuttavia, con il commercio in evoluzione non poteva restare immobile. Se all’inizio anche a Napoli regole scritte e regole non scritte disciplinavano la pratica assicurativa, con il tempo le regole scritte assunsero un ruolo predominante, anche se per motivi di carattere fiscale (Prammatica De Assicurationib...

This work aims to investigate the evolution of general average and insur-ance regulations and procedures in Genoa, as well as the ways in which they intersected, with a view to fully understanding the mechanisms for managing maritime trade risks from the late Middle Ages to the early modern age. To this end, by using two complementary sources \u2013 that is, general average claims and insurance policies \u2013 and by cross-referencing some available data sets dating to the period between the end of the sixteenth century and the be-ginning of the seventeenth century, we will attempt to determine how danger-ous the routes connecting the port of Genoa used to be. Finally, we will give some examples to demonstrate how both institutions available to maritime merchants were actually working and complementing each other. From this point of view, Genoa offers a unique vantage point, due to the important role played by its port and its highly dynamic and resourceful businessmen, who succeeded in developing cutting-edge financial instruments, the use of which would quickly spread from Genoa to all the other European market

В статье рассмотрен вопрос наличия и применимости комплекса источников по страхованию от огня – в целях реконструкции и оценки собственно страхования как области экономической деятельности, и для исчисления народного богатства. Также представлен краткий обзор законодательства и институционального становления страхового дела.

Galina Ulianova. The Sources of Fire Insurance Statistics in Russia on the Eve of the late XXth Century: General and Regional Data

The article describes the sources concerning fire insurance in Russia during the late XIXth century, which survive in varying forms of completeness and shall be used both for the study of insurance itself as a field of economic activity and for national wealth evaluation. It also includes the review of legislation and institutional development of the insurance business.