Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding
Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding
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Abstract
Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. The international information they gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state building and economic development. During the Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation’s institutional fabric. By the early nineteenth century, insurers were no longer just risk assessors. They were nation builders and market makers. Deeply and imaginatively researched, Underwriters of the United States uses marine insurers to reveal a startlingly original story of risk, money, and power in the founding era.
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Front Matter
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Prologue: A Composite Narrative of a Visit to the Marine Insurance Office, 1800
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Introduction
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One
Insure, Britannia! Marine Insurance and the Maritime Empire, 1622–1776
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Two
Underwriting a Revolution, 1776–1789
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Three
Forging “Golden Chains”: The Constitutional Project of Chartering Insurance Companies, 1790–1800
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Four
Investing Capital and Inventing Value, 1800–1815
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Five
Market Readers, Market Makers: American Insurers at War, 1793–1815
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Six
Wooden Ships, Paper Capitals: The Rise and Fall of Jacob Barker, 1815–1826
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Seven
State Making and Myth Making, 1820–1860
- Conclusion
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End Matter
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