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A Fragile Network: Effecting Hail Insurance in Britain, 1840–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2020

SAMUEL RANDALLS Open the ORCID record for SAMUEL RANDALLS [Opens in a new window]  and
JAMES KNEALE
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Abstract

Hail insurance in Britain emerged as a product by and for farming communities, expanding as wheat production rose in the mid-nineteenth century before declining in the latter decades of the century amidst wide-scale conversion from arable to livestock farming. Drawing on detailed research conducted in the remaining archives of the three major hail insurers in this period, we demonstrate the challenges of establishing a new insurance product for farmers. We argue that to make hail insurance effective, the insurance company’s central office collated and circulated information, rules, and paperwork to enable it to govern farmers, agents, and valuers at a distance. Such networks were fragile and required continual maintenance, whether to enhance reputation, manage farmers’ requests for new products, enforce rules, or tinker with rates in response to perceived risks and competitive pressures. Conceptualizing this emerging insurance business as a fragile network is a useful device demonstrating that paperwork, the governing of actors, and personal rivalries are as important as broader economic changes in explaining the development of a novel insurance product in this period.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 739 - 769
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the archivists and staff that have helped during the research, particularly Anna Stone at Aviva, and the London Metropolitan Archives team. The referees and editor of Enterprise and Society provided detailed and constructive comments that have helped sharpen this piece. Productive comments were also received from conference audiences at the Agricultural History Society, British Association of Victorian Studies, History of European Agricultural Statistics, and International Congress on the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, as well as seminar audiences in the series “Gouvener le progress et ses dégâts” in Paris, and at Durham, King’s College London and Birmingham Universities. Thank you to Cath D’Alton for drawing the figures.

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

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Cockerell, Hugh A. L., and Green, Edwin. The British Insurance Business: History and Archive. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.Google Scholar
De Goede, Marieke. Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Joyce, Patrick. The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Levy, Jonathan. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobo-Guerrero, Luis. Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
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Cox, Graham, Lowe, Philip, and Winter, Michael. “The Origins and Early Development of the National Farmers’ Union.” The Agricultural History Review 39, no. 1 (1991): 30–47.Google Scholar
Didier, Emmanuel. “Do Statistics ‘Perform’ the Economy?” In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economists, edited by MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia, 276–310. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
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Goddard, Nicholas. “The Development and Influence of Agricultural Periodicals and Newspapers, 1780–1880.” The Agricultural History Review 31, no. 2 (1983): 116–131.Google Scholar
Grigg, David. “Farm Size in England and Wales, from Early Victorian Times to Present.” The Agricultural History Review 35, no. 2 (1987): 179–189.Google Scholar
Hull, Matthew S. “Documents and Bureaucracy.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Managerial Failure in Late Victorian Britain? Land Use and English Agriculture.” Economic History Review 54 (2001): 240–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Prices and Structural Response in English Agriculture, 1873–1896.” Economic History Review 50, no. 3 (1997): 477–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Responding to Agricultural Depression, 1873–96: Managerial Success, Entrepreneurial Failure?” The Agricultural History Review 50, no.2 (2002): 225–252.Google Scholar
Kneale, James, and Randalls, Samuel. “Imagined Geographies of Climate and Race in Anglophone Life Assurance, c. 1840–1930.” In Weather, Climate, and the Geographical Imagination: Placing Atmospheric Knowledges, edited by Mahony, Martin and Randalls, Samuel, 115–131. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kneale, James, and Randalls, Samuel. “Invisible Atmospheric Knowledges in British Insurance Companies, 1830–1914.” History of Meteorology 6 (2014): 35–52.Google Scholar
Law, John, and Ruppert, Evelyn. “The Social Life of Methods: Devices.” Journal of Cultural Economy 6, no. 3 (2013): 229–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Stephen. “Cattle Clubs, Insurance and Plague in the Mid-nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History Review 53, no. 2 (2005): 192–211.Google Scholar
Mauelshagen, Franz. “Sharing the Risk of Hail: Insurance, Reinsurance and the Variability of Hailstorms in Switzerland, 1880–1932.” Environment and History 17, no. 1 (2011): 171–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, Donald N. “The Open Fields of England: Rent, Risk, and the Rate of Interest, 1300–1815.” In Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past, edited by Galenson, David W., 5–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Miskell, Louise. “Putting on a Show: The Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Victorian Town, c. 1840–1876.” The Agricultural History Review 60, no. 1 (2012): 37–59.Google Scholar
Musson, A. E. “The Great Depression in Britain, 1873 to 1896: A Reappraisal.” The Journal of Economic History 19, no. 2 (1959): 199–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberholzner, Frank. “From an Act of God to an Insurable Risk: The Change in the Perception of Hailstorms and Thunderstorms since the Early Modern Period.” Environment and History 17 (2011): 133–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat, and Roberts, Alex. “Governmental Conditions for the Economization of Uncertainty: Fire Insurance, Regulation and Insurance Actuarialism.” Journal of Cultural Economy 7, no. 3 (2014): 253–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Robin. “Towards an Historical Model of Services Innovation: The Case of the Insurance Industry, 1700–1914.” Economic History Review 50, no. 2 (1997): 235–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, P. J. “High Farming in Victorian Britain: The Financial Foundations.” Agricultural History 52, no. 3 (1978): 364–379.Google Scholar
Pietruska, Jamie L. “‘Cotton Guessers’: Crop Forecasters and the Rationalization of Uncertainty in American Cotton Markets, 1890–1905.” In The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, edited by Berghoff, Hartmut, Scranton, Philip, and Spiekermann, Uwe, 49–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” The British Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (1992): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stead, David R. “Risk and Risk Management in English Agriculture, c. 1750–1850.” Economic History Review 57, no. 2 (2004): 334–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Michael. “Output and Prices in U.K. Agriculture, 1867–1914, and the Great Agricultural Depression Reconsidered.” The Agricultural History Review 40, no. 1 (1992): 38–51.Google Scholar
Webb, Jonathan D. C., and Elsom, Derek M.. “The Great Hailstorm of August 1843: The Severest Recorded in Britain?” Weather 49 (August 1994): 266–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Illustrated London NewsGoogle Scholar
The Leicester ChronicleGoogle Scholar
London StandardGoogle Scholar
The StandardGoogle Scholar
Trewman’s Exeter Flying PostGoogle Scholar
Wrexham and Denbighshire AdvertiserGoogle Scholar
County Hail Storm Insurance Company archive, Hertfordshire County Council Archives, HertfordGoogle Scholar
General Hailstorm Company archive, Aviva, NorwichGoogle Scholar
Royal Farmers Insurance Company archive, London Metropolitan Archives, LondonGoogle Scholar
Alborn, Timothy. Regulated Lives: Life Assurance and British Society, 1800–1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katherine, Anderson.. Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Baker, Bruce E., and Hahn, Barbara. The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Bouk, Dan. How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capris di Cigliero, Saverio. Saggio sullo Stabilimento d’una Cassa d’Assicurazione Mutua contro danni cagionati dalla Grandine. Torino, It.: salla Tipografia di Domenico Pane, 1830.Google Scholar
Cockerell, Hugh A. L., and Green, Edwin. The British Insurance Business: History and Archive. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.Google Scholar
De Goede, Marieke. Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Joyce, Patrick. The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Levy, Jonathan. Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobo-Guerrero, Luis. Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Zakim, Michael. Accounting for Capitalism: The World the Clerk Made. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Alan R. H. “Hail as Hazard: Changing Attitudes to Crop Protection against Hail Damage in France, 1815–1914.” The Agricultural History Review 60, no. 1 (2014): 19–36.Google Scholar
Clarke, Ernest. “Shaw, William (1797–1853),” revised by Nicholas Goddard. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Accessed February 3, 2014. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25272.Google Scholar
Cox, Graham, Lowe, Philip, and Winter, Michael. “The Origins and Early Development of the National Farmers’ Union.” The Agricultural History Review 39, no. 1 (1991): 30–47.Google Scholar
Didier, Emmanuel. “Do Statistics ‘Perform’ the Economy?” In Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economists, edited by MacKenzie, Donald, Muniesa, Fabian, and Siu, Lucia, 276–310. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Didier, Emmanuel. “Sampling and Democracy: Representatives in the First United States Surveys.” Science in Context. 15, no. 3 (2002): 427–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Nicholas. “The Development and Influence of Agricultural Periodicals and Newspapers, 1780–1880.” The Agricultural History Review 31, no. 2 (1983): 116–131.Google Scholar
Grigg, David. “Farm Size in England and Wales, from Early Victorian Times to Present.” The Agricultural History Review 35, no. 2 (1987): 179–189.Google Scholar
Hull, Matthew S. “Documents and Bureaucracy.” Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 251–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Managerial Failure in Late Victorian Britain? Land Use and English Agriculture.” Economic History Review 54 (2001): 240–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Prices and Structural Response in English Agriculture, 1873–1896.” Economic History Review 50, no. 3 (1997): 477–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, E. H., and Pam, S. J.. “Responding to Agricultural Depression, 1873–96: Managerial Success, Entrepreneurial Failure?” The Agricultural History Review 50, no.2 (2002): 225–252.Google Scholar
Kneale, James, and Randalls, Samuel. “Imagined Geographies of Climate and Race in Anglophone Life Assurance, c. 1840–1930.” In Weather, Climate, and the Geographical Imagination: Placing Atmospheric Knowledges, edited by Mahony, Martin and Randalls, Samuel, 115–131. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kneale, James, and Randalls, Samuel. “Invisible Atmospheric Knowledges in British Insurance Companies, 1830–1914.” History of Meteorology 6 (2014): 35–52.Google Scholar
Law, John, and Ruppert, Evelyn. “The Social Life of Methods: Devices.” Journal of Cultural Economy 6, no. 3 (2013): 229–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, Stephen. “Cattle Clubs, Insurance and Plague in the Mid-nineteenth Century.” Agricultural History Review 53, no. 2 (2005): 192–211.Google Scholar
Mauelshagen, Franz. “Sharing the Risk of Hail: Insurance, Reinsurance and the Variability of Hailstorms in Switzerland, 1880–1932.” Environment and History 17, no. 1 (2011): 171–191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, Donald N. “The Open Fields of England: Rent, Risk, and the Rate of Interest, 1300–1815.” In Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past, edited by Galenson, David W., 5–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Miskell, Louise. “Putting on a Show: The Royal Agricultural Society of England and the Victorian Town, c. 1840–1876.” The Agricultural History Review 60, no. 1 (2012): 37–59.Google Scholar
Musson, A. E. “The Great Depression in Britain, 1873 to 1896: A Reappraisal.” The Journal of Economic History 19, no. 2 (1959): 199–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oberholzner, Frank. “From an Act of God to an Insurable Risk: The Change in the Perception of Hailstorms and Thunderstorms since the Early Modern Period.” Environment and History 17 (2011): 133–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat, and Roberts, Alex. “Governmental Conditions for the Economization of Uncertainty: Fire Insurance, Regulation and Insurance Actuarialism.” Journal of Cultural Economy 7, no. 3 (2014): 253–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Robin. “Towards an Historical Model of Services Innovation: The Case of the Insurance Industry, 1700–1914.” Economic History Review 50, no. 2 (1997): 235–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, P. J. “High Farming in Victorian Britain: The Financial Foundations.” Agricultural History 52, no. 3 (1978): 364–379.Google Scholar
Pietruska, Jamie L. “‘Cotton Guessers’: Crop Forecasters and the Rationalization of Uncertainty in American Cotton Markets, 1890–1905.” In The Rise of Marketing and Market Research, edited by Berghoff, Hartmut, Scranton, Philip, and Spiekermann, Uwe, 49–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Nikolas, and Miller, Peter. “Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government.” The British Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (1992): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stead, David R. “Risk and Risk Management in English Agriculture, c. 1750–1850.” Economic History Review 57, no. 2 (2004): 334–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Michael. “Output and Prices in U.K. Agriculture, 1867–1914, and the Great Agricultural Depression Reconsidered.” The Agricultural History Review 40, no. 1 (1992): 38–51.Google Scholar
Webb, Jonathan D. C., and Elsom, Derek M.. “The Great Hailstorm of August 1843: The Severest Recorded in Britain?” Weather 49 (August 1994): 266–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Illustrated London NewsGoogle Scholar
The Leicester ChronicleGoogle Scholar
London StandardGoogle Scholar
The StandardGoogle Scholar
Trewman’s Exeter Flying PostGoogle Scholar
Wrexham and Denbighshire AdvertiserGoogle Scholar
County Hail Storm Insurance Company archive, Hertfordshire County Council Archives, HertfordGoogle Scholar
General Hailstorm Company archive, Aviva, NorwichGoogle Scholar
Royal Farmers Insurance Company archive, London Metropolitan Archives, LondonGoogle Scholar