Risky Narratives: Framing General Average into Risk-management Strategies

Over the last few years, historians have extensively investigated on the role of risk in the history of finance, and the development of risk-management techniques in the United States since the late nineteenth century. Well-established approaches that considered such innovations beneficial in themselves have been questioned, by pointing out the consequences of the pervasive spread of financial tools designed to mitigate risks. It appears, rather, that a socially uneven distribution of risk went along with the financial efficiency brought by these novelties, whose legitimacy rested on narratives identifying individual freedom with the taking of risks. This essay explores the possibility that something similar might have occurred in early modern Europe, when marine insurance provided an alternative to contracts previously used to mitigate the risks connected to sea trade. It also aims at discussing whether the spread of specialized insurance markets, beginning in the sixteenth century, brought to a substantial shift in the distribution of these types of risks from a restricted trading group to a broader social base.