Maritime Insurance

Marine/maritime insurance has a history that dates back many hundreds of years, but is also an important component of vessels on the high seas in 2013. This paper covers the history of maritime insurance and brings the subject up-to-date with material from the recent literature.

History of Maritime Insurance

The growth of maritime insurance companies in the eighteenth century was "…one of the major developments in the history of English commerce," according to A.H. John, writing in the peer-reviewed journal Economica (John, 1958, p. 126). John writes that the origins of maritime insurance go back "…to the later middle ages," just a very small amount of "underwriting" was conducted prior to the American Civil War because there was great competition from important European commercial centres like Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Hamburg (126).

The author of this article explains that the maritime insurance market in London did not really expand...
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