...During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, commercial risks were high, and they shifted constantly. Nevertheless, the financial security of the United States depended on its foreign trade. Throughout this tumultuous period, American marine insurers accrued profits with a combination...

... comprised of rebel Spanish-Dominican colonists, the British, and even some Haitian factions that toppled the Ferrand regime in a war that ended in July 1809. After telling the story of this seldom-recounted episode in the Napoleonic Wars, the epilogue then rearticulates the book’s core contributions...

...During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, British and American codependence in the India trade heightened, and so too did codependence in British industrial production and American cotton cultivation. American ships and merchants provided ready access for British Indian goods...

...When the Napoleonic Wars ended, the world looked very different to American marine insurers. Peace lowered the risks (and profits) of ocean commerce. The republic's economic turn inland and the collapse of the Federalist Party presaged a national political economy less attuned to insurers...