Assurer les colonies, dominer les territoires. L’extraversion du marché assurantiel aux Antilles françaises (1840-2024)

Lauriane Arnuel () and Eric Kamwa ()
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Lauriane Arnuel: PHEEAC - Pouvoirs, Histoire, Esclavages, Environnement Atlantique Caraïbe - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Université des Antilles (Pôle Martinique) - UA - Université des Antilles
Eric Kamwa: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - AgroParisTech - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) - Université de Haute-Alsace (UHA) Mulhouse - Colmar - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement

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Abstract: This study traces two centuries of property insurance history in the French Antilles (1840-2024) and examines a paradox: how do these territories, the most exposed to natural disasters in the French Republic, remain structurally underinsured? The analysis reveals three structural dynamics. First, a logic of radical extraversion: British domination until 1940, followed by capture by French metropolitan groups, without any lasting emergence of local actors. Second, the systematic failure of local insurance autonomy attempts (1861-1910), crystallizing tensions between centralizing imperial logics and Creole aspirations. Third, the contemporary persistence of massive non-insurance despite the apparent normalization of supply. This paradox does not result from technical inadequacy but from a structural gap between an imported insurance model and Antillean realities: poverty, alternative solidarities, and exclusionary insurance practices. The article demonstrates that uninsurability is not a natural condition but a historical and political construction, revealing continuities between colonial domination and post-colonial dependencies. Insurance thus appears as a governmentality device defining who deserves protection and who can be abandoned to their vulnerability.

Date: 2026-02-23
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