The Risk of Natural Catastrophe in Early America: Perspectives from the Phoenix Assurance Company London and Nascent US Insurers

Abstract

Abstract This paper surveys insurance policies and proposals by companies that operated in the decades around 1800 in different regions of the North American continent. Our survey serves to compose a landscape of environmental risks that early insurers registered. This line of inquiry merits special attention for records of the Phoenix Assurance Company London, which include a unique documentation of natural hazards shaped by the risk inspection tour of the British insurance expert Jenkin Jones. We attempt to offer a long-term view on those natural catastrophes and disaster-prone regions that hold a prominent place in American memory since the late nineteenth century.