Marine Insurance and War in Modern Britain

Principal Investigator: Dr Luis Lobo-Guerrero

Duration: January 2010 – July 2011

Funder: Research Institute for Social Sciences, Keele University

 

The project aims to explore the relationship between marine insurance and the security of the British state in the modern period. Drawing on cases from the Napoleonic Wars, World Wars I and II, and the post Cold War environment, it aims to develop theoretical resources with which to account for an intimate relationship between the development of marine insurance since the eighteenth century and Britain’s capacity to wage war. In doing so, the project makes a contribution to the understanding of the ways in which a rationality of risk permeated the reason of state as strategy for government.

Research involves extensive archival research at The National Archives at Kew Gardens, the Guildhall Library, the British Library, as well as private collections and interviews with senior and retired officials at Lloyd’s of London.

The project will contribute the second of a trilogy of monographs on insurance and power in the modern period.

 

Outcome: Research monograph entitled Insuring War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk, under contract with Routledge, to be published in 2012.