Assicurazioni e gioco d'azzardo tra Bordeaux, Londra e Livorno. Le polizze speculative sul commercio franco-caraibico durante la guerra di successione austriaca

During the eighteenth century the deal of marine insurance is characterized by a trend of continuous growth punctuated by soaring peaks during major wars. It is a dynamic that is reflected in all major European markets, and that helps to consolidate the insurance practice among traders, to improve the legal and institutional apparatuses of control and to transform the organization of the insurance business. A key step in the evolution of the market seems to have been the Anglo-French conflict of 1744-48. At the end of the war the total assets of the insurance appeared reshaped for the involvement of three main changes: a closer integration between the different national markets, the birth, a bit 'all over Europe, of the joint stok companies, and the emergence of the London market - where a couple of companies were already operating from the 20s - as the main coordination center, to the detriment of Amsterdam. The speculation of the last years of the war appears to have substantially contributed to determine this remodeling. The change is encouraged by the high insurance rates and by the arrest of the French foreign trade - especially Atlantic -, but made possible by appropriate contractual arrangements that, in a more or less lawful, allowed to release the contract from the need of a underlying insurable interest. The speculative bubble triggered by the deal of «interest or not interest» or «wager» policies, has already been studied from the point of view of legislative initiatives that were launched by the British Parliament to mitigate its potentially destructive effects. In my speech the same topic will be examined from the point of view of the subordinate market of Livorno, in an attempt to shed light on the network of collaborations - or collusions - which transformed the European insurance market in a big gambling house.