Privilege at a Premium: Insurance, Maritime Law and Political Economy in Early Modern France, 1664-c. 1710

Abstract

My dissertation offers the first major study of the marine insurance industry under Louis XIV since the end of the Second World War. It analyses the Royal Insurance Chamber (1668-86) and the Royal Insurance Company (1686-c. 1710), insurance institutions established in Paris under the auspices of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and his son, the Marquis de Seignelay. I use the extensive registers left by these extraordinary institutions, kept in the Archives nationales in Paris, alongside French state papers and royal legislation to study their formation and their activities. I integrate the institutions into a broader analytical framework, allowing me to treat the Parisian insurance market as a laboratory for studying early modern insurance markets more broadly. Through this framework, I establish why the markets of Amsterdam and London took off where that of Paris did not. Based on this framework, the chapters of the dissertation study why the Chamber and the Company were established; the interests of those involved in the institutions; how the institutions overcame market deficiencies in gathering information on maritime affairs; the nature of the institutions’ underwriting over time; the institutions’ influence, more broadly, on the French state’s maritime strategy; and the institutions’ approaches to conflict resolution. Ultimately, I conclude the Parisian market lacked adequate state support in times of crisis. By contrast, London and Amsterdam’s insurance markets benefited from consistent state and municipal support. I therefore challenge the argument of New Institutional Economics on the role of the state in early modern economic development. Furthermore, I challenge the current orthodoxy on absolutism itself, offering a route out of the ongoing stalemate in the historiography.