Translated by Franziska Streng.
Since 1736, Hamburg’s price current consistently listed the marine insurance premiums of the Hanseatic Town as well as of many other European ports. Based on the long-term analysis of these quotations over the course of about 120 years, this book sheds light on the factors of influence (such as weather conditions, wars and piracy, to name a few) which interfered with European and intercontinental maritime trade. The cause of the long-term decline of premium rates and, by extension also of transaction costs is understood as a consequence of both the restoration of security on the high seas after the Napoleonic Wars and the elimination of the last nests of piracy around 1830.
Author(s): Markus A. Denzel
Series: Brill's Studies in Maritime History, 12
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 432
City: Leiden
Preface ix
List of Illustrations xi
Note on Hamburg Currency xvi
Introduction 1
Current State of Research 6
Source, Methods and Questions of Research 12
1. Spreading the Risk – Marine Insurance as a Commercial and Financial Innovation in Europe up to the Eighteenth Century 20
1.1 The Beginnings in the Medieval Mediterranean 20
1.2 The Emergence of the Marine Insurance Business in Early Modern Times 34
2. An Entrepôt in the North – Hamburg as a Centre of Maritime Trade and Transport 46
2.1 Hamburg’s Maritime Trade from the Late Seventeenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries 46
2.2 Hamburg as a Centre of Maritime Transport 64
3. Depending on the City’s Commerce – the ‘Regional’ Hamburg Insurance Market in the Eighteenth Century 73
3.1 Marine Insurance and Convoy Shipping 73
3.2 Juridical Bases of the Hamburg Marine Insurance Business 83
3.3 The Hamburg Marine Insurance Market as “Centre of the Whole North” 87
4. A Business of Its Own – the ‘Global’ Hamburg Insurance Market in the Nineteenth Century 92
4.1 The Changing Basic Conditions in International Shipping 92
4.2 The Business of (Joint-Stock) Marine Insurance Companies in Hamburg 96
4.3 The Marine Insurance Business in Hamburg up to the 1850s 108
5. From Arkhangelsk to Cádiz – Marine Insurance Rates for Destinations in the Atlantic 119
5.1 The North Atlantic: Greenland and Arkhangelsk 119
5.2 Norway 130
5.3 From the German North Sea Coast to the Sound 134
5.4 The Netherlands 143
5.5 The British Isles 148
5.6 The French Atlantic Coast 159
5.7 The Iberian Atlantic Coast 167
6. From Málaga to Smyrna – Marine Insurance Rates for Destinations in the Mediterranean Sea 178
6.1 The Western Mediterranean 179
6.2 The Eastern Mediterranean 185
7. From the Sound to Saint Petersburg – Marine Insurance Rates for Destinations in the Baltic Sea 192
7.1 The Hamburg Premium Rates 194
7.2 The Lübeck Premium Rates 200
7.3 Premium Rates from Amsterdam, London, Bordeaux, Portugal, and the Mediterranean 211
8. From New York to Lima – Marine Insurance Rates for Destinations in the Americas 223
8.1 The Iberian Transatlantic Routes in the Eighteenth Century 224
8.2 North American East Coast and Gulf of Mexico 230
8.3 The Caribbean 237
8.4 South America and California 246
8.5 The Russian Transatlantic Routes in the Early Nineteenth Century 253
9. From the Cape to Canton – Marine Insurance Rates for Destinations in the Indian Ocean 256
9.1 The European Routes to East India in the Eighteenth Century 256
9.2 The Hamburg Marine Insurance Premium Rates in the Nineteenth Century 262
Conclusions 268
Appendix 1: The Geographic Range of the Premium Quotations in the Hamburg Price Current, 1736 to 1859 281
Appendix 2: The Premium Quotations in the Hamburg Price Current, 1736 to 1859 291
Bibliography 364
Geographic Index 407
Subject Index 416
