
How Maritime Insurance Helped Build Ancient Rome - pmcpinto
http://priceonomics.com/how-maritime-insurance-built-ancient-rome/
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dredmorbius
Conversely, risk and financing of sea voyages delayed utilisation of the
lateen rig sail -- the triangular sail familiar on sloops, as opposed to older
square-rig designs -- until about the 13th century.

This risk-aversion actually _increased_ risks and costs of sailing: shipping
could only occur from March through November, even across the relatively calm
waters of the Mediterranean, and ships could only sail before the wind, not
into it.

There's a brief discussion of this in James Burke's _Connections_ (1977),
though I'd expect more complete coverage in his sources.

This makes me think of financing and risk controls and their effects over
technology adoption.

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Animats
Ah, Flexport PR again.

The classic work on the history of marine insurance is "Against the Gods: The
Remarkable Story of Risk" by Bernstein. This is heavily oriented towards
Lloyds of London. It doesn't trace insurance back to the Romans.

Plowing through the reference to Temin[1], there's a long discussion of wheat
distribution in Rome. Too much regression analysis applied to too little data.
Temen then recaps Economics 101 at some length.

After jumping around through history, Temin finally focuses on the Roman era.
He writes "The Roman “company” was a sophisticated information-sharing
institution.", but says little about what a "company" meant. The Romans never
invented the concept of the corporation. They got close. They never developed
ongoing non-state institutions bigger than a rich individual. There were
transient organizations such as venture groups, ("societas") where a group of
people bought shares in a plan to send a ship somewhere and profit from the
trade. The venture dissolved at the end of the voyage when the parties were
paid off. (This is where the term "venture capital" comes from.) This is risk-
sharing, but not insurance. There was something called a "societates
publicanorum", which was close to a corporation, but more like a limited
partnership. But the historical references are thin and questionable.[2] Those
may have been special-purpose entities involved with the Roman government for
tax farming.

The Romans definitely had loans, and to some extent, had banks. The Temple of
Apollo sold mortgages. They had the concept of agency, in the legal sense we
use today. But the best-known bank of the era (because some of their records
have survived)[3], the Sulpicii, was a family business.

None of these references describe an independent insurer. That would be one
who, for an agreed fee, will cover a loss, but isn't otherwise involved in the
business. The Romans don't seem to have gotten that far.

[1]
[http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Temin2013.pdf](http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Temin2013.pdf)
[2]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=pJY3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA159&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=pJY3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=societates+publicanorum&source=bl&ots=C2LnayAB8h&sig=b7VBop5u0D45qnjCrl3JAVrPQX0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKnrDXnMvLAhVE0WMKHbtCAqAQ6AEIODAF#v=onepage&q=societates%20publicanorum&f=false)
[3]
[http://weblaw.usc.edu/centers/clhc/archives/workshops/docume...](http://weblaw.usc.edu/centers/clhc/archives/workshops/documents/Rowe.pdf)

~~~
mmanfrin
Rhodes had the Lex Rhodia (which included a provision granting 'general
average'); a sort of group-based insurance scheme for differing ventures to
compensate those among the group whose ships were lost. So the concept did
indeed exist in (or at least before) Roman times.

The Romans also had life insurance, so the concept of insurance was there.

Genoa most certainly had banking houses issuing insurance and loans -- and
their rivals in Venice did as well (but that was more state-oriented and
derived). However, I'd agree that there doesn't seem to be much evidence
towards institutional insuring in Rome.

