¹ Worldwide insurance premiums amounted to US$3.4 trillion across 145 countries in 2005. Swiss Re, “World Insurance in 2005,” Sigma, no. 5 (2006).

² Studies of international insurance have been hitherto largely confined to histories of individual companies or national markets. Exceptions include Wilkins, Mira, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970)Google Scholar; Pearson, Robin, “The Development of Reinsurance Markets in Europe during the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of European Economic History 24, no. 3 (1995): 557–71Google Scholar; Borscheid, Peter, “Vertrauensgewinn und Vertrauensverlust: Das Auslandsgeschaft der deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft 1870-1945,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 88, no. 4 (2001): 311–45Google Scholar; Umbach, Kai, “Die Position deutscher Transport versicherer auf dem Weltmarkt 1880-1914,” Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 94, no. 4 (2006): 413–37Google Scholar. See also several of the contributions to Borscheid, Peter and Pearson, Robin, eds., Internationalisation and Globalisation of the Insurance Industry in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Marburg, 2007)Google Scholar.

³ Mira Wilkins has shown the way with her analysis of U.S. life-insurance companies abroad before 1914, but there is much more to be done. Wilkins, Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 65. See her comments in “Multinational Enterprise in Insurance: An Historical Overview,” in Internationalisation and Globalisation of the Insurance Industry, eds. Borscheid and Pearson, 4-26.

⁴ Pearson, Robin, “Finance, Insurance,” in History of World Trade since 1450, 2 vols., ed. McCusker, John J. (Farmington Hills, Mich., 2006), vol.1: 290–91Google Scholar.

⁵ There were, for example, eleven German transport insurers in Sweden in 1893, fourteen in Austria in 1913, seventeen in Italy in 1912, nineteen in Denmark, and ten in Finland in 1903. In all these countries, native offices accounted for two-thirds or more of premiums by the decade before the First World War. Umbach, “Deutscher Transportversicherer.”

⁶ Trebilcock, Clive, Phoenix Assurance, 2 vols. (Cambridge, U.K., 1985, 1998), vol.1: 248–67Google Scholar.

⁷ Pearson, “Development of Reinsurance Markets.”

⁸ Dickson, P. G. M., The Sun Insurance Office, 1760-1960 (Oxford, 1960), 192.Google Scholar

⁹ Marine, The Sumitomo & Fire Insurance Co., The First Century, 1893-1993 (privately printed, 1993), 12Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Trebilcock, , Phoenix Assurance, vol.1: 315–16Google Scholar.

¹¹ Mutuals are excluded from this table in order to compare like with like. Almost all foreign entrants were stock companies. In some countries, the number of tiny mutual offices was very large. There were 1,012 “parish” mutual fire-insurance associations in Sweden in 1910, for instance.

¹² Spectator (May 1871): 417; Insurance Times (hereafter IT). 1883): 608; Rundschau der Versicherungen (hereafter RdV) 13 (1863): 36–38Google Scholar; Vereinsblatt fur Deutsches Versicherungswesen (hereafter VDV) 2 (1874)Google Scholar; Bergander, Bengt, Försäkringsväsendet i Sverige, 1814-1914 (Lund, 1967)Google Scholar.

¹³ Rosales, Esperanza Frax and Quiza, Jesús Matilla, “Los Seguros en España: 1830-1934,” Revista de Historia Económica 14, no. 1 (1996): 183–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ The data on marine insurance must be treated with particular caution. In the age of telegraphy, marine insurance appears to have been highly price elastic, and risks could be relatively easily insured in London by shipowners and merchants where local agents could not offer a competitive premium. Such insurance policies would not appear in national statistics. Umbach, “Deutscher Transportversicherer,” 429.

¹⁵ Only three of the twenty-one markets moved across this threshold, namely, nonlife insurance in Norway, where the premium share of foreign companies increased from 23 percent in 1868 to 31 percent in 1875; and fire and marine insurance in the United States, as shown in Table 3, where foreign market share rose above the 30 percent mark between 1872 and 1915, sometimes more than once.

¹⁶ Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance, vol.2: 142. According to the U.S. consul in Moscow in 1905, foreign insurance companies could operate under a charter, but few did. A few more operated illegally. U.S. Bureau of Manufactures, Insurance in Foreign Countries, Special Consular Report 38 (Washington, D.C., 1905)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ This question is explored for the United States in a forthcoming book by Robin Pearson, Insuring America: Multinational Insurers in the United States, 1850-1920.

¹⁹ Maddison, Angus, Dynamic Forces in Capitalist Development (Oxford, 1991), 210Google Scholar; Wilkins, History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 159.

²⁰ Pearson, Robin, “British and European Insurance Enterprise in American Markets, 1850-1914,” Business and Economic History 26 (Winter 1997): 438–51Google Scholar.

²¹ Edelstein, Michael, “Foreign Investment and Accumulation, 1860-1914,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 2nd ed., vol.2, eds. Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald N. (Cambridge, U.K., 1994), 173–96Google Scholar; Trebilcock, , Phoenix Assurance, vol.1: table 5.6; vol. 2: table 2.3.Google Scholar

²² Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance, vols. 1 and 2; and Pearson, “Reinsurance Markets.”

²³ Lönnborg, Mikael, Internationalisering av suenska forsäkringsbolag: Drivkrafter, organisering och utveckling, 1855-1913, Uppsala Studies in Economic History no. 46 (Uppsala, 1999), 158.Google Scholar

²⁴ Trebilcock, , Phoenix Assurance, vol. 1: 234–36Google Scholar.

²⁵ One example was the agency of John C. Paige of Boston. By 1880, Paige had two British, two French, and four American fire offices as clients, and had built up “one of the largest and most thriving insurance agencies in the East.” IT 13 (Dec. 1880): 700.

²⁶ RdV 27 (1877): 37-43.

²⁷ Keneley, Monica, “The Origins of Formal Collusion in Australian Fire Insurance, 1870-1920,” Australian Economic History Review 42, no. 1 (2002): 54–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The same is true of Britain beginning in the 1860s. Westall, Oliver M., “Marketing Strategy and the Competitive Structure of British General Insurance, 1720-1980,” Business History 36, no. 2 (1994): 20–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ For example, La Foncière of Paris established an offshoot, La Fondiaria, in Florence in 1878. Assecuranz Jahrbuch (hereafter AJ) 1 (1880): 269-70.

²⁹ Dickson, Sun Insurance Office, 226-30; Pearson, “British and European Insurance Enterprise,” 438-51.

³⁰ Post Magazine (hereafter PM), 6 June 1899.

³¹ Pearson, “Reinsurance Markets.”

³² Pearson, Robin, “The Birth Pains of a Global Reinsurer: Swiss Re of Zurich, 1864-79,” Financial History Review 8, no. 1 (2001): 27–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ RdV 22 (1872): 276-77; RdV 26 (1876): 181-82.

³⁴ There were twenty-five foreign reinsurance bureaus in Paris alone by 1878. RdV 28 (1878): 51-52.

³⁵ Skandia Corporate Archive, Styrelseprotokoll, 3 Apr. 1900; Swiss Re Corporate Archive, Swiss Re., Protokolle der Verwaltungsratssitzungen, 14 July 1910.

³⁶ Penrose, Edith T., The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar; Aharoni, Yair, The Foreign Investment Decision Process (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar; Cyert, Richard M. and March, James G., A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963)Google Scholar; Hymer, Stephen H., The International Operations of National Firms: A Study of Direct Foreign Investments (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar.

³⁷ Johanson, Jan and Vahlne, Jan-Erik, “The Internationalization Process of the Firm: A Model of Knowledge Development and Increasing Foreign Market Commitments,” Journal of International Business Studies 8, no. 1 (1977): 23–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Forsgren, Mats, “Some Critical Notes on Learning in the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model,” working paper, no.2 (Uppsala, 2002)Google Scholar; Björkman, Ingmar and Forsgren, Mats, “Nordic International Business Research: A Review of its Development,” International Studies of Management and Organization 30, no. 1 (2000): 6–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ Spain's first multinational insurer, La Union y El Fenix Español, founded in 1864, commenced direct underwriting abroad in Portugal in 1868. Jose Luis Garcia-Ruiz and Leonardo Caruana, “The Internationalisation of the Business of Insurance in Spain, 1939—2005,” in Internationalisation and Globalisation of the Insurance Industry, eds. Borscheid and Pearson, 66-83.

³⁹ Faerden, Karl, Forsikringsvesenets historie i Norge, 1814-1914 (Oslo, 1967), 324–25Google Scholar.

⁴ AJ 20 (1899):158.

⁴¹ These were the Ren He and the Ji He companies, founded in 1876 and 1878, respectively. Kang, Zheng, “Assurance modernes en Chine: Une continuité interrompue (1801-1949),” Risques 31 (July-Sept. 1997): 103–20Google Scholar.

⁴² PM, 20 Aug. 1881.

⁴³ PM, 27 Mar. 1886, 3 Aug. 1889.

⁴⁴ AJ 2 (1881): 367-68; AJ 18 (1897): 184; AJ 17 (1898): 145; AJ 20 (1899): 158; PM, 8 Apr. 1882. The average premium yield per $100 insured in the United States for seventeen British and German fire offices operating there in 1878 was over twice as high as the yield from their business in the rest of the world. Calculated from IT (Aug. 1879): 573.

⁴⁵ Mikael Lönnborg and Robin Pearson, “Multinational Insurers and Catastrophic Loss: Responses to the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906,” unpublished paper.

⁴⁶ Insurance & Commercial Magazine (hereafter ICM) 14 (Jan.-June 1883): 334.

⁴⁷ Nippon Life Insurance Company, The 100-Year History of Nippon Life: Its Growth and Socio-Economic Setting, 1889-1989 (Osaka, 1991), 46Google Scholar, discussing the Nippon Sea and Land Insurance Company; The Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Company, The Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance: The First Century, 1879-1979 (Tokyo, 1980), 36–45Google Scholar; Trebilcock, , Phoenix Assurance, 1: 317Google Scholar; 2:141.

⁴⁸ “Home-foreign” premiums declined from 28 percent of foreign premiums earned by the Phoenix of London in 1846-50 to 8 percent in 1866-70. Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance, vol.1: 190, table 5.6.

⁴⁹ In this paper, “foreign” only applies to insurance companies whose head office is located in another country. In federal polities, such as the United States and Germany, the term was also often applied by state authorities to companies from other states operating in their territory. Such companies are here referred to as “out of state.”

⁵⁰ Calculated from Jahrbuch für das gesamte Versicherungswesen in Deutschland, 1864-66.

⁵¹ Posner, Richard. A., “Theories of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 5, no. 2 (1974): 335–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peltzman, Sam, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” Journal of Law and Economics 19, no. 2 (1976): 211–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meier, Kenneth J., The Political Economy of Regulation: The Case of Insurance (Albany, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁵² Arps, Ludwig, Auf sicheren Pfeilern: Deutsche Versicherungswirtschaft vor 1914 (Göttingen, 1965), 37–48Google Scholar.

⁵³ Police validation of fire-insurance policies became a legal requirement in Hanover in 1828, Hesse in 1833, Prussia in 1837 (insurance on goods) and 1841 (buildings insurance), and Wurttemberg in 1852. The nature and scope of this validation is not known.

⁵⁴ Stigler, George J., “The Theory of Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2, no. 1 (1971): 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Meier, Political Economy, 54.

⁵⁶ See the list in Hayden's Annual Cyclopedia of Insurance in the United States (Hartford, 1906-1907), 638–46Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ ICM 9 (June-Nov. 1880): 248.

⁵⁸ Western Insurance Review (hereafter WIR) 1 (1867-68): 310-11.

⁵⁹ RdV 9 (1859): 45-47.

⁶⁰ Lüdkte, Alf, Police and State in Prussia, 1815-1850 (Cambridge, U.K., 1989)Google Scholar; Koselleck, Reinhart, Preußen zwischen Reform und Revolution (Munich, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ The U.S. exception was a federal stamp duty on all fire-insurance policies introduced in 1862.

⁶² The latter was reduced to 2 percent in the wake of the great New York City fire of 1835. State of New York, New York Insurance Reports—Condensed Edition, vol. 1: 1830-53 (Albany, 1873), xxiv.Google Scholar

⁶³ Deutsche Versicherungs-Zeitung 21 (1880): 603.

⁶⁴ RdV 22 (1872): 411.

⁶⁵ WIR 3 (1869-70): 382; Rough Notes 60 (1917): 104.

⁶⁶ Rosales and Quiza, “Los Seguros en Espana,” 198. For similar requirements in Russia, see RdV 22 (1872): 21; Best, Paul J., “Insurance in Imperial Russia,” Journal of European Economic History 18, no. 1 (1989): 139–69Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Cf., for example, the Spanish insurance law of 1908, which required all companies seeking a license to have just 25 percent paid up on their shares: Rosales and Quiza, “Los Seguros en España,” 188-89.

⁶⁸ ICM 14 (Jan.-June 1883): 146-47, 154.

⁶⁹ Freyer, Tony A., “Business Law and American Economic History,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. 2: The Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E. (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), 435–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purcell, Edward A. Jr, Litigation and Inequality: Federal Diversity Jurisdiction in Industrial America, 1870-1958 (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Clements, George A., Digest of Fire Insurance Decisions in the Courts of the United States, Great Britain and Canada (New York, 1893)Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Foreign insurers, of course, could face hostile juries as well as sympathetic judges in the United States, most notably when involved in claims litigation after the San Francisco earth-quake of 1906. Lonnborg and Pearson, “Multinational Insurers and Catastrophic Loss.”

⁷² RdV 13 (1863): 368-72.

⁷³ WIR 3 (1869-70): 689-70; RdV 30 (1880): 358-59; ICM 7 (July 1879): 101. Some states were quick to follow New York's lead. In Ohio, for instance, a law came into effect in 1880 banning companies from writing both fire and life insurance. ICM 8 (Jan. 1880): 107.

⁷⁴ Morton Keller has described four types of business regulation, namely, American “pluralist,” German “corporatist,” British “contract liberal,” and French “dirigiste.” However, these have questionable relevance to insurance where the multiple layers of regulation in countries such as Germany and Belgium defy any such neat typologies based on political economy. Keller, Morton, “The Pluralist State: American Economic Regulation in Comparative Perspective, 1900/1930,” in Regulation in Perspective: Historical Essays, eds. Keller, Morton and McCraw, Thomas (Boston, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ So far, we have found no evidence of formal international collaboration among insurance regulatory bodies during this períod.

⁷⁶ Novak, William J., The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Argued by regulators, for example, in the Swiss cantons. Körner, Martin, Banken und Versicherungen im Kanton Luzern vom ausgehenden Ancien Régime bis zum ersten Weltkrieg (Lucerne, 1987), 157Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Spectator 12 (1874): 146-47.

⁷⁹ Wilkins has demonstrated this in the case of U.S. life insurers in Germany before 1914, where New York Life, thanks to the diplomatic talents of its vice president, coped with hostile regulators more effectively than the other American offices. Wilkins, Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 103-7.

⁸⁰ Borscheid, Peter, “Systemwettbewerb, Institutionenexport und Homogenisierung: Der Internationalisierungsprozess der Versicherungswirtschaft im 19. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte 51, no. 1 (2006): 26–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸¹ Pearson, Robin, “Las compañias extranjeras en España, 1800-1939,” in Empresas y Mercado del Seguro en la España Contemporánea, eds. Pons Pons, Jerònia and Pons Brias, Maria Angeles (forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁸² We wish to thank Janette Rutterford for raising this point with us.

⁸³ There is only limited evidence of premium rate regulation through most of the period we cover. In Austria, the power to examine policy conditions and premium rates was extended in 1860 to provincial commissioners appointed by the Ministry of the Interior, but how far they amended rates is unknown. In Russia, the premium rates of the state-chartered fire-insurance companies were fixed by their charters. In the United States, despite the extension of antitrust regulation to fire insurance—sixteen states had enacted so-called anti-compact laws by 1907—no state directly regulated premium rates before Kansas did so in 1909. The Kansas law was contested through the courts, until it was finally upheld by the Supreme Court in 1914. Anticompact laws counted from Hayden's Annual Cyclopedia of Insurance in the United States, 1906-7 (Hartford, 1907), 28–45Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Lönnborg, Mikael, “Svenska försäkringsbolag tidiga internationalisering,” Nordisk Försäkringstidskrifi no. 4 (2000): 312–36Google Scholar; and Lönnborg, Mikael, “Skandiakoncernens internationella verksamhet 1887-1995,” Nordisk Försäkringstidskrift no. 3 (2002): 1–20.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Swiss Re, “Emerging Markets: The Insurance Industry in the Face of Globalisation,” Sigma no. 4 (2000).