Insuring the Industrial Revolution. Fire insurance in Britain, 1700-1850

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Winner of the Wadsworth Prize for Business History, 2004. Scholarly seminal account of fire insurance in the 18th and early 19th centuries 'providing a foundation for future comparative international studies ... and a greater level of theorising by historians about the relationship between insurance, perceptions of risk, economic development and social change'. As well as 'measuring the size, market structure and growth rate of insurance, and the extent to which the first industrial revolution was insured, it demonstrates ways in which insurance can be linked into wider issues of economic and social change in Britain. These range from an examination of the joint stock company form of organisation - to an analysis of changing attitudes towards fire hazard during the course of the eighteenth century'. In three parts: 1] 'Fire insurance and British economic growth, 1700-1850'; 2] 'Fire insurance markets of Georgian London', 'Provincial fire insurance in the eighteenth century', 'Insurance in wartime, 1782-1815', 'Insurance in and out of crisis, 1815-50'; 3] 'Company foundation', 'Marketing', 'Underwriting', 'Investments'. Includes much on individual insurance business, especially: Atlas Assurance Co, County Fire Office, Guardian Fire & Life Assurance Co, Hand in Hand Fire & Life Assurance Co, Imperial Fire & Insurance Co, Kent Fire Office, London Assurance Corp, Manchester Fire & Life Insurance Co, Norwich Union Fire Insurance Society, Phoenix Assurance Co, Royal Exchange Assurance Corp, Sun Fire Office, Union Assurance Society