ABSTRACT
Insurance initially globalized along different paths for the three main lines of business: marine, fire, and life insurance. Due to the differences in the risks insured, legal frameworks, cultural biases, and geo-political events, we can identify several actors that helped the business globalize. Companies, especially joint stock, were responsible for the first internationalization of fire insurance in the late eighteenth century, while the marine market relied more on an informal trade network that allowed shippers to offer insurance among themselves. Up until the intensive globalization of the later nineteenth century, companies, however, played a relatively modest role in spreading insurance while imitation appears to have been a major factor as British companies were copied in other markets. Emigration was significant in spreading life insurance including fraternal help organizations to white settler countries while the German model of state provided insurance was increasingly adopted by other countries. The different organizational forms in insurance, mutual, joint stock, fraternal, and state and their respective roles have provoked some debate in the literature, at times politically motivated. More investigation into the different roles of such organizations in the globalization process are still necessary.
