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Marine Insurance in Philadelphia During the Quasi-War with France, 1795–1801

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2011

Christopher Kingston
Christopher Kingston*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, Amherst College, 314 Converse Hall, Amherst, MA 01002. E-mail: cgkingston@amherst.edu.
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Abstract

Until the 1790s marine insurance in the United States was organized by brokers and underwritten by private individuals. Beginning in 1792, however, the private underwriters had to compete with newly formed marine insurance corporations. Each organizational form had advantages and disadvantages. This article uses archival data from a private underwriter and a corporation to study how the competition between these different organizational forms was affected by a powerful exogenous shock which substantially increased the risks to American merchant shipping in the late 1790s: the “Quasi-War” between the United States and France.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 162 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2011

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