Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T00:24:33.325Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Institutional Transfer: The Beginnings of Insurance in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2015

Peter Borscheid  and
Niels-Viggo Haueter
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

At the turn of the nineteenth century, modern insurance started to spread from the British Isles around the world. Outside Europe and the European offshoots in North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, it began to compete with other forms of risk management and often met with stiff opposition on religious and cultural grounds. Insurance arrived in Southeast Asia via British merchants living in India and Canton rather than through agencies of European firms. While the early agency houses in Bengal collapsed in the credit crisis of 1829–1834, the firms established by opium traders residing in Macau and Hong Kong, and advised by insurance experts in London, went on to form the foundations of the insurance industry in the Far East. Until the early twentieth century, they sought to use the techniques of risk management that they had developed in Europe to win Europeans and Americans living in Southeast Asia as clients, along with members of the local population familiar with Western culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 89 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 207 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For further information on the global spread of modern insurance since the mid-eighteenth century, see Borscheid, Peter and Haueter, Niels-Viggo, eds., World Insurance: The Evolution of a Global Risk Network (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Borscheid, Peter, “Global Insurance Networks,” in The Value of Risk, ed. James, Harold (Oxford, 2013), 21–69Google Scholar.

2 For further information on these issues, see Chan, Cheris Shun-Ching, Marketing Death: Culture and the Making of a Life Insurance Market in China (New York, 2012), 169–81Google Scholar.

3 Bernstein, Peter L., Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Hoboken, N.J., 1996)Google Scholar; Braun, Heinrich, Geschichte der Lebensversicherung und der Lebensversicherungstechnik (Berlin, 1963), 145–47Google Scholar; Arps, Ludwig, Auf sicheren Pfeilern: Deutsche Versicherungswirtschaft vor 1914 (Göttingen, 1965), 21–24Google Scholar.

4 Flower, Raymond and Jones, Michael Wynn, Lloyd's of London (London, 1974), 106Google Scholar; Trebilcock, Clive, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, vol. 1, 1782–1870 (Cambridge, U.K., 1985), 169Google Scholar; Cockerell, Hugh, “Lloyd's of London,” in International Directory of Company Histories, ed. Hast, Adele, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1991), 278–81Google Scholar.

5 Webster, Anthony, Gentlemen Capitalists: British Imperialism in Southeast Asia, 1770–1890 (London, 1998), 41Google Scholar; Webster, Anthony, The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767–1836 (Woodbridge, U.K., 2007), 7–14Google Scholar; Singh, S. B., European Agency Houses in Bengal, 1783–1833 (Calcutta, 1966), 1–12Google Scholar, 24–28, 152–64; Tripathi, Amales, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833 (Bombay, 1956), 11–13Google Scholar; Parker, James G., “Scottish Enterprise in India, 1750–1914,” in The Scots Abroad: Labor, Capital, Enterprise, 1750–1914, ed. Cage, R. A. (Beckenham, U.K., 1985), 200Google Scholar; Reinhard, Wolfgang, Geschichte der europäischen Expansion, 2 vols. (Stuttgart, 1983, 1988), 1:227Google Scholar; Kulke, Hermann and Rothermund, Dietmar, Geschichte Indiens: Von der Induskultur bis heute (Munich, 2006), 310Google Scholar; Greenberg, Michael, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42 (Cambridge, U.K., 1951), 106–11Google Scholar.

6 Rungta, Radhe Shyam, The Rise of Business Corporations in India, 1851–1900 (London, 1970), 223Google Scholar.

7 Milburn, William, Oriental Commerce; Containing a Geographical Description of the Principal Places in the East Indies, China and Japan, 2 vols. (London, 1813), 1:236Google Scholar, 2:172; Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 45–47; Singh, European Agency Houses, 32–33; Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 143; Jacques Charbonnier, L'assurance en Chine: Des origins à Mao (Norderstedt, 2009), 35–36; Greenberg, British Trade, 172; Dermigny, Louis, La Chine et l'Occident: Le Commerce à Canton au XVIIIe Siècle, 1719–1833, vol. 3 (Paris, 1964), 1233Google Scholar.

8 Rungta, Rise of Business Corporations, 12.

9 Milburn, Oriental Commerce, 2:172; Rungta, Rise of Business Corporations, 12–13, 223–24; Agarwala, Amar Narain, Insurance in India (Allahabad, 1960), 34–37Google Scholar; Ray, R. M., Life Insurance in India: Its History, Law, Practice, and Problems (Bombay, 1941), 8Google Scholar.

10 Peter Borscheid, “Germany: Insurance, Expansion, and Setbacks,” in World Insurance, ed. Borscheid and Haueter, 104.

11 Mason, A. W., Owen, George, and Brown, G. H., The East-India Register and Directory for 1821, 2nd ed. (London, 1821), 128–29Google Scholar; Rungta, Rise of Business Corporations, 12.

12 Kling, Blair B., Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Berkeley, 1976), 61–62Google Scholar; Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 46–50, 124.

13 Neumann, Carl Friedrich, Asiatische Studien (Leipzig, 1837)Google Scholar, 232, 247; Greenberg, British Trade, 76; Blake, Robert, Jardine Matheson: Traders of the Far East (London, 1999), 20–24Google Scholar.

14 Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle 58 (1788): 555.

15 Greenberg, British Trade, 27–28; Cheong, W. E., Mandarins and Merchants: Jardine Matheson & Co., a China Agency of the Early Nineteenth Century (London, 1978), 12Google Scholar; Keswick, Maggie, ed., The Thistle and the Jade: A Celebration of 150 Years of Jardine, Matheson & Co. (London, 1982), 63Google Scholar; Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, 1242; Coates, Austin, Macao and the British, 1637–1842: Prelude to Hong Kong (Hong Kong, 1988), 139Google Scholar.

16 Pagani, Catherine, “Eastern Magnificence and European Ingenuity”: Clocks of Late Imperial China (Ann Arbor, 2001), 100–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenberg, British Trade, 25–27; Keswick, Thistle and Jade, 50–53; Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, 1237–40.

17 Keswick, Thistle and Jade, 181.

18 Peter Borscheid, “Far East and Pacific: Overview,” in World Insurance, ed. Borscheid and Haueter, 417.

19 Mason, A. W. and Owen, George, eds., The East-India Register and Directory for 1819, 2nd ed. (London, 1819), 147Google Scholar; Milburn, Oriental Commerce, 172; Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, 1243.

20 Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants, 264.

21 Ibid., 13, 55–76; Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident, 1244; Blake, Jardine Matheson, 37–41; Greenberg, British Trade, 122.

22 Keswick, Thistle and Jade, 14–17.

23 Connell, Carol M., A Business in Risk: Jardine Matheson and the Hong Kong Trading Industry (Westport, Ct., 2004), 30–31Google Scholar, 36; Chen Bin, “Preparing for the Challenge Ahead: A History of the Canton Register, c. 1827 to 1838” (MA thesis, University of Macau, 2012); all issues of the Canton Register in 1835, online at: books.google.de/books?id=fQrmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA33&dq=canton+register+1835&hl=de&sa=X&ei=z8gOVb2MOorTaN6kgMAG&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=canton%20register%201835&f=false.

24 Singh, European Agency Houses, 132–34; Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 181; Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 67.

25 Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 256.

26 Allen, G. C. and Donnithorne, Audrey G., Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya: A Study in Economic Development (London, 1962), 21–23Google Scholar, 27; Borscheid, “Far East and Pacific,” 419.

27 Webster, Richest East India Merchant, 4–5, 60, 112, 120, 130; Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 41–42, 142; Singh, European Agency Houses, 276–94; Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 196–201, 210, 229–31, 238; Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants, 100, 121–27, 216–23.

28 Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants, 127, 208–9, 226–29; Blake, Jardine Matheson, 78; Greenberg, British Trade, 124–31.

29 Connell, Business in Risk, 27–28.

30 Pichon, Alain Le, China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong, 1827–1843 (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar, 236n105.

31 Ibid., 170–73; Allen, G. C. and Donnithorne, Audrey G., Western Enterprise in Far Eastern Economic Development: China and Japan (London, 1962), 119–20Google Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford, 2000), 32–33Google Scholar; Charbonnier, L'assurance en Chine, 36–44; Reinsurance, Swiss, ed., Insurance Markets of the World (Zurich, 1964), 532Google Scholar.

32 Bengal Directory and Annual Register for the Year 1838 (Calcutta, 1838), 485–90.

33 Bengal and Agra Annual Guide and Gazetteer for 1841, vol. 1 (Calcutta, 1841), 199–205.

34 Le Pichon, China Trade and Empire, 171.

35 Webster, Richest East India Merchant, 53–54; Bengal and Agra Annual Guide, 199–205; Ray, Life Insurance in India, 7.

36 Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 117–18, 169, 194, 258.

37 Cheong, Mandarins and Merchants, 269; Le Pichon, China Trade and Empire, 171–73; Lee, Kam Hing, A Matter of Risk: Insurance in Malaysia, 1826–1990 (Singapore, 2012), 24, 50–52Google Scholar, 66.

38 An Anglo-Chinese Calendar for the Year 1847 (Canton, 1847), 130; Bard, Solomon, Traders of Hong Kong: Some Foreign Merchant Houses, 1841–1899 (Hong Kong, 1993), 85Google Scholar.

39 Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 159–60.

40 Ibid., 160–62.

41 Ibid., 230.

42 Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance, 233.

43 Ibid., 190.

44 Singh, European Agency Houses, 302–3; Rungta, Rise of Business Corporations, 13; Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 249–50; Agarwala, Insurance in India, 10; Ray, Life Insurance in India, 9.

45 Lee, Matter of Risk, 13.

46 Borscheid, “Far East and Pacific,” 426–27.

47 Keswick, Thistle and Jade, 95–101.

48 Ibid., 85–91; Bard, Traders of Hong Kong, 46.

49 Keswick, Thistle and Jade, 104; Bangyan, Feng and Kau, Nyaw Mee, Enriching Lives: A History of Insurance in Hong Kong, 1841–2010 (Hong Kong, 2010)Google Scholar, 11, 32; Dong, Stella, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (New York, 2000), 67–68Google Scholar; Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance, 313; Blake, Jardine Matheson, 125–26; Connell, Business in Risk, 35.

50 Feng and Nyaw, Enriching Lives, 48–55; Dong, Shanghai, 101; Hsü, Immanuel C. Y., The Rise of Modern China (New York, 2000), 426–32Google Scholar, 494–95.

51 Webster, Gentlemen Capitalists, 122.

52 Lee, Matter of Risk, 79.

53 Ibid., 73–86.

54 Chan, Marketing Death, 167, 183.

55 Agarwala, Insurance in India, 33.

56 See Re, Swiss, “World Insurance in 2011,” Sigma 3 (2012): 41Google Scholar.