Introduction

Having analysed the financial innovative mutual insurances in the province of Groningen and the disparity between formal and informal institutions and the consequences for the actors in Amsterdam, my analysis of the marine insurance industry now focuses on Rotterdam and more specifically on the formal and informal institutions governing the insurance market and influencing the actors in the industry.

Until the nineteenth century, Rotterdam was surpassed by its peer at the IJ in many ways. Did the insurance market evolve in a similar way to what we see in Amsterdam or did the size of the business bring about other developments and other institutions? Our analysis of Amsterdam shows that the relationship between the various parties involved, and in particular the position of the municipality towards these parties, has been crucial to the development of the insurance business. Did Rotterdam, with its initially far smaller business community, its less impressive trade volume and commercial network, show a development pattern similar to that of Amsterdam, or did the particular size of the market induce different developments? We have already learned from the case of Groningen that a smaller market does not exclude the development of instruments of financial safeguarding. Certain features, particular to Groningen, led to the development of an intricate system of financial safeguarding, based on mutuality. Did Rotterdam also see the emergence of these mutual boxes, did it instead conform to the ‘Amsterdam-model’, or did it develop its own system of safeguarding ship-owners and merchants from the perils of the sea? Even though the size of the Rotterdam insurance market and its commercial community may have suited the development of mutual boxes, I demonstrate that other requirements were lacking, thus making Rotterdam unsuitable for a system of mutual insurances. Since Rotterdam did not possess a sufficient number of wealthy renteniers and merchants to form a solid basis capital for underwriting such as in Amsterdam, Rotterdam did indeed need to find its own approach to developing an independent, flourishing maritime insurance market. The relationships and co-operation between municipality, merchants, insurers and brokers was profoundly different from the situation in Amsterdam, taking Rotterdam on its own path of institutional development.