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Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding (Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)
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About Underwriters Of The United States: How Insurance
Product Description Unassuming but formidable, American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the new nation. The international information they gathered and the capital they generated enabled them to play central roles in state building and economic development. During the Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish a single national bank. Afterward, they increased their influence by lending money to the federal government and to its citizens. Even as federal and state governments began to encroach on their domain, maritime insurers adapted, preserving their autonomy and authority through extensive involvement in the formation of commercial law. Leveraging their claims to unmatched expertise, they operated free from government interference while simultaneously embedding themselves into the nation's institutional fabric. By the early nineteenth century, insurers were no longer just risk assessors. They were nation builders and market makers. Deeply and imaginatively researched, Underwriters of the United States uses marine insurers to reveal a startlingly original story of risk, money, and power in the founding era. Review "Good and economically literate treatment of the importance of maritime insurance during the time of America's founding." - Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution (blog) "Deeply researched, smartly written...pithy and witty." - Frederick C. Leiner, Sea History Review Addressing a subject that other scholars have overlooked, Farber makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the early republic. Insurance companies not only supported the expansion of American maritime enterprise and economic development; they also invested the capital they raised to underwrite the national government created by the Constitution of the United States. A premier example of scholarship revealing how money shaped the state."—Paul A. Gilje, University of Oklahoma About the Author Hannah Farber is assistant professor of history at Columbia University.
