Insurance Covered: Meditations on Insurance and Society
Welcome to Insurance Covered summer special series Meditations on Insurance and Society.
Normally on this podcast Peter is joined by a guest to discuss an aspect of the wonderful world of insurance. But, this August, we are doing something different. Instead of our normal fortnightly podcast, we are releasing an 8 episode mini series focusing on the role that insurance has played throughout history in shaping society. They will incorporate a bit of history, a bit of philosophy, some psychology, a lot of insurance and… who knows what else.
We hope you enjoy this series.
1. In Response To Fear
In this episode we look at:
- What are the social and developmental pre-requisites for insurance?
- What are the things that need to be in place before one even contemplates the concept of insurance?
- What are the problems that insurance seeks to solve?
- The first steps towards what we know as the modern form of insurance.
2. An Irreligious Faith
In part two we look at:
- How the concept of insurance developed in the era of the Babylonians.
- The link between religious faith and insurance.
- Bottomry and Respondentia as a early form of proto-insurance.
- Why the Amish do not use insurance.
- The prerequisites to the modern premium based insurance we know today.
3. The Beneficial Selfishness of Strangers
In part three we look at:
- The first evidence of a modern insurance policy.
- The merchant-insurer trade in 14th century Italy.
- The opening of the first insurance companies.
- How Antwerp became the first major insurance hub.
- How London became the insurance capital.
- The rise of fire insurance, a response to the 1666, Great Fire of London
4. Unmoved Mover
In part four we look at:
- The psychology of insurance
- Why we buy insurance
- The impact insurance has on 'moral hazard'
- The paradox of insurance - 'It changes nothing but changes everything'
- The impact of insurance in 3 historically important events; the industrial revoloution in Britain, the war of independence in America & the North Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
- Insurance as the great 'Unmoved Mover'
5. Understanding Life Forwards
In part five we look at:
- How insurers calculate future risk
- How insurance seeks to identify 'monsters in the fog'
- The opening of the worlds first life assurance fund in 1744
- The use of mortality rates to calculate risk of death
- Early applications of probability theory in insurance
- The change on life assurance policies that required purchasers to have an insurable interest in the individual.
6. Everyone Everywhere All At Once
In part six we look at:
- How insurance developed into the global industry it is today
- How insurance came to be 'everywhere'
- How technology and enhanced trade encouraged the growth of insurance
- The impact war in the 1900s had on dismantling the insurance network centred around Britain and the development of more national insurance industries
- The development of specialist reinsurers
- The use of microinsurance in developing countries
- The welfare system making insurance available to everyone
7. Towards A Philosophy Of Insurance
In part seven we look at:
- The philosophical thinking behind insurance
- the framework for understanding why insurance is such a potent force in society
- The five F words that help us understand the philosophy behind insurance: Fragility, Fear, Future, Faith and Freedom
- insurance as a mirror to our own insecurities
8. The Unexpected Triumph Of Morality
In part eight we look at:
- the future of insurance
- the rise of morality within insurance
- insurance and ESG
- insurance as a moral system?
- The social purpose of insurance
- Insurance and climate change
Sources for further reading
This list does not constitute an exhaustive bibliography, but it includes all of the major sources used in the writing of the Meditations
On Insurance and Insurance History
Addobbati, Andrea: Italy 1500-1800: Cooperation and Competition, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Bogatyreva, Anastasia: England 1660-1720: Corporate or Private?, an essay in Leonard Marine
Borscheid, Peter and Haueter, Niels Viggo: World Insurance The Evolution of a Global Risk Network, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012
Brasher, Meredith: Insurance vs King Hammurabi of Babylon, Insurance vs History podcast, 20 March 2023
Carter, Robert L. and Falush, Peter: The British Insurance Industry Since 1900: The Era of Transformation, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2009
Catlin, Stephen (with James Burcke): Risk & Reward, Iskaboo, London, 2017
Cockerell, H.A.L. and Green, Edwin: The British Insurance Business 1547-1970, Heineman Educational Books, London, 1976
Daniel, Jean-Pierre: The Broader Cultural Context of Insurance and Religions, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Vol 28 No1 (January 2003) 102-110
De Roover, Florence Edler: Early Examples of Marine Insurance, Journal of Economic History, Vol 5 No2 (1945)
De ruysscher, Dave: Antwerp 1490-1590: Insurance and Speculation, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Farber, Hannah: Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, Omohundro Institute, Virginia, and University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2021
Gephart, W.F.: Insurance and the State, Macmillan, New York, 1913 (reprinted by Bibliolife LLC)
Go, Sabine C.P.J.: Amsterdam 1585-1790: The Emergence, Dominance and Decline, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Insurance Covered podcast:
Leonard, Adrian, edited by: Marine Insurance Origins and Institutions, 1300-1850, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2016 (a collection of essays each of which is listed separately and cited as 'Leonard Marine')
Leonard, Adrian: London 1426-1601: Marine Insurance and the Law Merchant, an essay in Leonard Marine
Leonard, Adrian: Insurance Marine Insurance 1438-1824, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2022
Mansfield, Peter: The A-Z of Insurance, RPC, London, 2022
Martin Frederick: The History of Lloyd's and of Marine Insurance in Great Britain, Macmillan & Co, London 1876 (reprinted by Elibron Classics, 2005)
Merkin KC, Rob: Marine Insurance A Legal History (2 volumes), Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2021
Norris, Clive Murray: A History of Methodist Insurance in Britain, Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford, 2022
Pearson, Robin: Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700
-1850, Ashgate Publishing, 2004, published Routledge, Abingdon, 2017
Pearson, Robin (edited by): The Development of International Insurance, Routledge, Abingdon, 2010
Pearson, Robin and Richardson, David: Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade, Journal of Economic History, Volume 79, Issue 2, June 2019
Piccinno, Luisa: Genoa, 1340-1620: Early Development of Marine Insurance, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Pons, Jeronia and Pearson, Robin (edited by): Risk and the Insurance Business in History, Fundacion MAPFRE, Madrid, 2020.
Raynes, Harold E.: A History of British Insurance, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, London, 1948 (second edition 1964)
Rossi, Guido: England 1523-1601: The Beginnings of Marine Insurance, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Spufford, Peter: From Genoa to London: the Places of Insurance in Europe, an essay in Leonard Marine.
Swiss Re Institute: Sigma 4/2022
Tracey, Myles A.: Insurance and Theology: The Background and the Issues, The Journal of Risk and Insurance, Vol 33, No 1 (Mar 1966), pp85-93
Trenerry, CF: The Origin and Early History of Insurance (including the contract of bottomry), PS King & Son, London, 1926 (republished The Lawbook Exchange Limited, New Jersey, 2009)
Turnbull, Craig: A History of British Actuarial Thought, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2017
Tykocinski, Orit: Insurance, Risk and Magical Thinking, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Volume 34, Issue 10, 2008
Tykocinski, Orit: The Counterintuitive Psychology of Insurance, TED Talk, 23 February 2022
Verster, Arne: The Insurance Industry and the Christian Worldview, www.apologeticscentral.org, 26 May 2022
Wang, Dan: How Maritime Insurance Helped Build Ancient Rome, Flexport.com, 29 January 2016
Zweifel, Peter and Eisen, Roland: Insurance Economics, Springer, Heidelberg, 2012
On Anthropology, Morality, General History, Science, Philosophy and other topics
Baddiel, David: The God Desire, TLS Books, London, 2023
Chronicle of the World, Dorling Kindersley, London, 1996
Davies, Norman: Europe: A History, Pimlico, London, 1996
De Waal, Frans: The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates, WW Norton, New York, 2013
Diamond, Jared: Guns, Germs & Steel, Vintage, London, 2005
Ferguson, Niall: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Penguin, London, 2008
Graeber, David and Wengrow, David: The Dawn of Everything, Allen Lane, London, 2021
Haidt, Jonathan: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Vintage, New York, 2013
Hands, John: The Future of Humankind: Why We Should be Optimistic, Castleton, London, 2023
Harari, Yuval Noah: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Vintage, London, 2011
Henrich, Joseph: The Weirdest People in the World, Allen Lane, London, 2020
Hill, Dr Fiona: The Reith Lecture 2022, Freedom from Fear.
Holland, Tom and Sandbrook, Dominic: Babylon, The Rest is History podcast, Episode 145, 31/01/2022
Holy Bible, New International Version, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1978
Kahneman, Daniel: hinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin, London, 2011
Pinker, Stephen: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, Allen Lane, London, 2018
Sandel, Michael J.: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2009
Schama, Simon: The Embarrassment of Riches, Harper Press, London, 2004
Sheldrake, Merlin: Entangled Life, Vintage, London, 2020
Smith, James K.A.: How to Inhabit Time, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2022
Strauss, David Levi: Photography and Belief, David Zwirner, New York, 2020
Suzman, James: Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, Bloomsbury Circus, London, 2020
Svendsen, Lars: A Philosophy of Fear, Reaktion Books, London, 2008
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Penguin, London, 2007
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas: Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Penguin, London, 2012
Tudge, Colin: Why Genes are not Selfish and People are Nice, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 2013
Ward, Keith: God: a Guide for the Perplexed, Oneworld, Oxford, 2003