Studies from Columbia University Yield New Data on Politics and Government (Slave Trade Insurance In the Age of Abolition: Archives, Politics, and Legalities): Politics and Government

NewsRx Policy and Law Daily

2023 JUN 02 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in Politics and Government. According to news reporting from New York City, New York, by NewsRx editors, the research stated, “In the late eighteenth century, slave trade insurance was a lucrative and visible business in British and American slave trading towns. Abolition, however, proved difficult.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from Columbia University, “United States laws were patchwork and never reached the federal level. Britain banned slave trade insurance in 1807 alongside the slave trade, but enforcement remained scattershot and ineffective. This article offers three reasons for this state of affairs. First, the marine insurance business’s transnationality, the dispersion of its paperwork, and its sometimes deliberate obscurity produced a profound information problem for abolitionists that impeded both legislation and enforcement. The second reason has to do with the evolution of abolitionists’ priorities and strategies in a complex international environment. Third, there was an enduring problem in the relationship between insurance and the law. Napoleonic-era commercial law was characterized by reversals, exceptions, gray areas, and sovereignty dilemmas. This produced a vast realm of legal uncertainty - a domain in which insurers, accustomed to assessing legal risks, had always thrived. Insurers, therefore, are not best characterized as obeying or defying a single thing called ‘the law’ in this period.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Rather, they were co-creators of a domain of legality within which slave trade insurance could be sold profitably for years after abolition.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Slave Trade Insurance In the Age of Abolition: Archives, Politics, and Legalities. Slavery & Abolition, 2023;44(2):350-376. Slavery & Abolition can be contacted at: Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2-4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, Oxon, England.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Hannah Farber, Columbia University, Dept. of History, 325 Fayerweather Hall, 1180 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027, United States.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039x.2023.2199723. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.