front cover of Marine Insurance in the Netherlands 1600-1870
Marine Insurance in the Netherlands 1600-1870
A Comparative Institutional Approach
Sabine Go
Amsterdam University Press, 2009

Marine insurance has been of great importance to the expansion of long distance trade and economic growth in the early modern period, in particular for seafaring nations such as the Dutch Republic. The Amsterdam market became Europes leading insurance market and within the Republic other insurance systems also emerged. Little is known about the differing institutional frameworks governing these industries and the interaction between the institutions and the actors in the industry.

This study will examine the development of marine insurance in the Netherlands in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the province of Groningen from c. 1600 to 1870 from an institutional point of view. It will examine how the behaviour of authorities, insurers, underwriters and brokers was affected by the formal and informal constraints of the industry and how in turn their conduct has influenced the institutional framework and induced institutional change.

A comparative institutional analysis will be made of three insurance systems in the Netherlands, each with its own distinctive characteristics. The interaction between institutions and actors will be studied in relation to the effects of technological innovations and international geo-political changes. By examining developments over a period of two and half centuries the path of long-term institutional change becomes discernable.

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front cover of The Ocean Is a Wilderness
The Ocean Is a Wilderness
Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856
Guy Chet
University of Massachusetts Press, 2014
Historians have long maintained that the rise of the British empire brought an end to the great age of piracy, turning the once violent Atlantic frontier into a locus of orderly commerce by 1730. In this book, Guy Chet reassesses that view by documenting the persistence of piracy, smuggling, and other forms of illegal trade throughout the eighteenth century despite ongoing governmental campaigns to stamp it out. The failure of the Royal Navy to police oceanic trade reflected the state's limited authority and legitimacy at port, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of Anglo-American constituents.

Chet shows how the traditional focus on the growth of the modern state overlooked the extent to which old attitudes and cultural practices continued to hold sway. Even as the British government extended its naval, legal, and bureaucratic reach, in many parts of the Atlantic world illegal trade was not only tolerated but encouraged. In part this was because Britain's constabulary command of the region remained more tenuous than some have suggested, and in part because maritime insurance and wartime tax policies ensured that piracy and smuggling remained profitable. When Atlantic piracy eventually waned in the early nineteenth century, it had more to do with a reduction in its profitability at port than with forceful confrontation at sea.

Challenging traditional accounts that chronicle forces of civilization taming a wild Atlantic frontier, this book is a valuable addition to a body of borderlands scholarship reevaluating the relationship between the emerging modern state and its imperial frontiers.
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