The Risk of Natural Catastrophe in Early America: Perspectives from the Phoenix Assurance Company London and Nascent US Insurers

Engel Elisabeth ()
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Engel Elisabeth: Independent Scholar, German Historical Institute, Washington DC, USA

Asia-Pacific Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2023, vol. 17, issue 2, 243-253

Abstract: This paper surveys insurance policies and proposals by companies that operated in the decades around 1800 in different regions of the North American continent. Our survey serves to compose a landscape of environmental risks that early insurers registered. This line of inquiry merits special attention for records of the Phoenix Assurance Company London, which include a unique documentation of natural hazards shaped by the risk inspection tour of the British insurance expert Jenkin Jones. We attempt to offer a long-term view on those natural catastrophes and disaster-prone regions that hold a prominent place in American memory since the late nineteenth century.

Keywords: early America; insurance; insurance history; natural catastrophes; the Phoenix (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1515/apjri-2023-0039

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