Autore
Addobbati, Andrea

Titolo
Assicurazioni e gioco d'azzardo tra Bordeaux, Londra e Livorno. Le polizze speculative sul commercio franco-caraibico durante la guerra di successione austriaca
Periodico
Quaderni storici
Anno: 2013 - Volume: 143 - Fascicolo: 2 - Pagina iniziale: 441 - Pagina finale: 466

In the eighteenth century the business of maritime insurance was characterizedby a continuous trend of growth punctuated by soaring peaks during major wars.This dynamic was reflected in all major European markets, and it helped to consolidateinsurance practices among traders, improve the legal and institutional apparatusesof control and transform the organization of the insurance business. Akey step in the evolution of the market was the Anglo-French conflict of 1744-48.The general field of maritime insurance was reshaped by the end of the war bythree main changes: closer integration between the different national markets, thebirth, all over Europe, of joint stock companies, and the emergence of the Londonmarket as the main coordination center, to the detriment of Amsterdam. The speculationof the last years of the war substantially contributed to this remodelling.Change was encouraged by high insurance rates and the blockade of French foreigntrade - especially in the Atlantic -, but made possible by contractual arrangementsthat allowed, more or less lawfully, to release a contract from the need tocertify an insurable interest, hence turning insurance into a kind of gamble. Thespeculative bubble triggered by the type of contract named «interest or not interest» or «wager policy», has already been studied from the point of view of thelaws passed by the British Parliament to mitigate its potentially destructive effects.This article examines the topic from the point of view of the secondary marketof Livorno, in an attempt to shed light on the network of collaborations - or collusions- which transformed the European insurance market into a big gamblinghouse.



SICI: 0301-6307(2013)143:2<441:AEGDTB>2.0.ZU;2-X
Testo completo: http://www.mulino.it/download/article/10.1408/74886
Testo completo alternativo: http://www.mulino.it/doi/10.1408/74886

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