Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T07:18:42.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

Robin Pearson  and
David Richardson
Robin Pearson
Affiliation:
Robin Pearson is Professor, Business School, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected].
David Richardson
Affiliation:
David Richardson is Professor, Wilberforce Institute, University of Hull, 27 High Street, Hull HU1 1NE, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One important, but overlooked, risk mitigation device that facilitated the growth of the slave trade in the eighteenth century was the increasing availability of insurance for ships and their human cargoes. In this article we explore, for the first time, the relative cost of insurance for British slave traders, the underlying processes by which this key aspect of the business of slavery was conducted, and the factors behind price and other changes over time. Comparisons are also drawn with the transatlantic slave trades of other nations. As well as analyzing the business of underwriting slave voyages, we have two other objectives. First, we explore the meaning of slave insurance from the perspective of those directly involved in the trade. Was it about insuring lives or goods? Second, we provide new estimates of the importance of the slave trade to U.K. marine insurance. Did the former drive the growth of the latter, as Joseph Inikori has claimed?

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 417 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Universities of Nottingham and Umeå. We are most grateful to the participants, as well as to the Editor of this Journal and to two anonymous referees, for their insightful comments.

References

REFERENCES

Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810. Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1992.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Tim. “Slavery, Insurance, and Sacrifice in the Black Atlantic.” In Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, edited by B. Klein and G. Mackenthun, 167–85. New York: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Behrendt, Stephen D. “Merchants, Transaction Cycles, and Profits: Merchant Decision Making in the British Slave Trade.” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 171–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrendt, Stephen D. “Human Capital in the British Slave Trade.” In Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery, edited by David, Richardson, Suzanne, Schwarz, and Anthony, Tibbles, 66–97. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Behrendt, Stephen D. “Ecology, Seasonality, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” In Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, edited by Bernard, Bailyn and Patricia, L. Denault, 44–85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Behrendt, Stephen D., David, Eltis, and David, Richardson. “The Costs of Coercion: African Agency in the Pre-Modern Atlantic World.” Economic History Review 54, no. 3 (2001): 454–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carlos, Ann M. “Bonding and the Agency Problem: Evidence from the Royal African Company, 1672–1691.” Explorations in Economic History 31 (1994): 313–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Geoffrey. Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England, 1695–1775. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Clark, Geoffrey. “The Slave’s Appeal: Insurance and the Rise of Commercial Property.” In The Appeal of Insurance, edited by Geoffrey, Clark, Gregory, Anderson, Christian, Thomann, et al., 52–74. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cockerell, H. A. L., and Edwin, Green. The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970: A Guide to Its History and Records. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Dalton, John T., and Tin, Cheuk Leung. “Dispersion and Distortions in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.” Journal of International Economics 96, no. 2 (2015): 412–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, David Brion. “Foreword.” In Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, by David, Eltis and David, Richardson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1962.Google Scholar
Del Treppo, Mario. “Assicurazioni e Commercio Internazionale a Barcellona nel 1428–1429.” Rivista Storica Italiana 69 (1957): 508–41.Google Scholar
Devine, Tom M. The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and Their Trading Activities 1740–1790. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Draper, Nicholas. “The City of London and Slavery: Evidence from the First Dock Companies, 1795–1800.” Economic History Review 61, no. 2 (2008): 432–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eltis, David, and Stanley, Engerman. “The Importance of Slavery and the Slave Trade to Industrializing Britain.” Journal of Economic History 60, no. 1 (2000): 123–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eltis, David, Frank, D. Lewis, and David, Richardson. “Slave Prices, the African Slave Trade, and Productivity in the Caribbean, 1674–1807.” Economic History Review 58, no. 4 (2005): 673–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Émerigon, Balthazard-Marie. Traité des Assurances et Des Contrats à la Grosse. 2 vols. Marseille: Jean Mossy, 1783.Google Scholar
Geggus, David. “The French Slave Trade: An Overview.” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (2001): 119–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haggerty, Sheryllynne. “Risk and Risk Management in the Liverpool Slave Trade.” Business History 51, no. 6 (2009): 817–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inikori, Joseph E. “Market Structure and the Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 41, no. 4 (1981): 745–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inikori, Joseph E. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
John, A. H. “The London Assurance Company and the Marine Insurance Market of the Eighteenth Century.” Economica 25, no. 98 (1958): 126–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, Christopher. “Marine Insurance in Britain and America, 1720–1844: A Comparative Institutional Analysis.” Journal of Economic History 67, no. 2 (2007): 379–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert S., and Stanley, L. Engerman. “Slave Mortality on British Ships, 1791–1797.” In Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research, edited by Roger, Anstey and Hair, P. E. H., 113–25. Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Occasional Series, vol. 2, 1989.Google Scholar
Leonard, Adrian. “Contingent Commitment: The Development of English Marine Insurance in the Context of New Institutional Economics, 1577–1720.” In Questioning Credible Commitment: New Perspectives on the Rise of Financial Capitalism, edited by D’Maris, Coffman, Adrian, Leonard, and Larry, Neal, 48–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobban, Michael. “Slavery, Insurance and the Law.” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 319–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magens, Nicholas. An Essay on Insurances. 2 vols. London: J. Haberkorn, 1755.Google Scholar
Marryat, Joseph. Observations upon the Report of the Committee of Marine Insurance. London: W. Hughes, 1810. Reprinted in History of Insurance: Volume 8 – Marine, edited by David, Jenkins and Takau, Yoneyama, 209–99. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000.Google Scholar
Miller, Joseph. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Brian R. British Historical Statistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kenneth. “Liverpool’s Dominance in the British Slave Trade, 1740–1807.” In Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery, edited by David, Richardson, Suzanne, Schwarz, and Anthony, Tibbles, 14–42. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Oldham, James. “Insurance Litigation Involving the Zong and Other British Slave Ships, 1780–1807.” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 299–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Sir James Allan. A System of the Law of Marine Insurances. 5th ed. London: J. Butterworth, 1802.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin. “Collective Diversification: Manchester Cotton Merchants and the Insurance Business in the Early Nineteenth Century.” Business History Review 65, no. 2 (1991): 379–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Robin. Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700–1850. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004.Google Scholar
Pearson, Robin, and David, Richardson. “Business Networking in the Industrial Revolution.” Economic History Review 54, no. 4 (2001): 657–79.Google Scholar
Postma, Johannes Menne. The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Radburn, Nicholas. “Keeping ‘the Wheel in Motion’: Trans-Atlantic Credit Terms, Slave Prices, and the Geography of Slavery in the British Americas, 1755–1807.” Journal of Economic History 75, no. 3 (2015): 660–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raynes, Harold E. A History of British Insurance. London: Sir Isaac Pitman, 1948.Google Scholar
Richardson, David. “The Costs of Survival: The Transport of Slaves in the Middle Passage and the Profitability of the Eighteenth-Century British Slave Trade.” Explorations in Economic History 24 (1987): 178–96.Google Scholar
Richardson, David. “Profits in the Liverpool Slave Trade: The Accounts of William Davenport, 1757–1784.” In Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition: Essays to Illustrate Current Knowledge and Research, edited by Roger, Anstey and Hair, P. E. H., 60–90. Liverpool: Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Occasional Series, vol. 2, 1989.Google Scholar
Richardson, David. (ed.). Bristol, Africa and the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade to America, vol. 4. Bristol: Bristol Record Society Publications, 47, 1996.Google Scholar
Roover, F. Edler de. “Early Examples of Marine Insurance.” Journal of Economic History 5 (1945): 172–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupprecht, Anita. “Excessive Memories: Slavery, Insurance and Resistance.” History Workshop Journal 64, no. 1 (2007a): 6–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupprecht, Anita. “‘A Very Uncommon Case’: Representations of the Zong and the British Campaign to Abolish the Slave Trade.” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007b): 329–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupprecht, Anita. “‘A Limited Sort of Property’: History, Memory and the Slave Ship Zong.” Slavery and Abolition 29, no. 2 (2008): 265–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solar, Peter M., and Nicholas, J. Duquette. “Ship Crowding and Slave Mortality: Missing Observations or Incorrect Measurement?” Journal of Economic History 77, no. 4 (2017): 1177–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, Robert L. The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Supple, Barry. The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance 1720–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Swaminathan, Srividhya. “Reporting Atrocities: A Comparison of the Zong and the Trial of Captain John Kimber.” Slavery and Abolition 31, no. 4 (2010): 483–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valin, René-Josué. Nouveau commentaire sur l’ordonnance de la marine, du mois d’août 1681. 2 vols. La Rochelle: J. Legier, 1776.Google Scholar
Viles, Perry. “The Slaving Interest in the Atlantic Ports 1763–1792.” French Historical Studies 7, no. 4 (1972): 529–43.Google Scholar
Walford, Cornelius. Insurance Cyclopedia, vol. 3. London: Charles and Edward Layton, 1874.Google Scholar
Walvin, James. The Zong: A Massacre, the Law, and the End of Slavery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Webster, Jane. “The Zong in the Context of the Eighteenth-Century Slave Trade.” Journal of Legal History 28, no. 3 (2007): 285–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weskett, John. A Complete Digest of the Theory, Laws, and Practice of Insurance. London: Frys, Couchman and Collier, 1781.Google Scholar
Wright, Charles, and Ernest Fayle, C.. A History of Lloyd’s: from the Founding of Lloyd’s Coffee House to the Present Day. London: Macmillan, 1928.Google Scholar
Zahadieh, Nuala. “Overseas Trade and Empire.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. Volume 1 1700–1870, edited by Roderick, Floud, Jane, Humphries, and Paul, Johnson, 392–420. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar