Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700û1850

Through a detailed study of the archives of nearly 50 English and Scottish insurance companies founded between 1696 and 1850, together with the construction of many new datasets on output, performance and markets, Insuring the Industrial Revolution presents one of the most comprehensive histories ever written of a financial service. As well as measuring the size, market structure and growth rate of insurance, and the extent to which the first industrial revolution was insured, it also demonstrates ways in which insurance can be linked into wider issues of economic and social change in Britain. These range from an examination of the joint-stock company form of organization, to an analysis of changing attitudes towards fire hazard during the course of the eighteenth century.