The history of insurances is more ancient than you might imagine and began many centuries ago.
We are so used to take for granted that everything, from cars to homes, can be insured, that it might be difficult to imagine that in the past there were no insurances, not like the ones that exist nowadays. In fact men have tried to insure themselves and their possessions for centuries, and to find the first examples of insurances, or at least of the ancestors of insurances, you need to go far back in time. The first insuring instrument date back to the Ancient Egypt, more precisely to 2700 B.C., when a cash for the funeral expenses of stonecutters was instituted. Similar examples of solidarity and mutuality can be found also in the ancient Greek, Roman and Middle East civilizations, and they can be seen as the germs of nowadays insurances.
In order to find something more similar to nowadays insurances you must consider a most recent period, more precisely the 14th century. It was in this century that the first insuring forms developed, which were meant to protect the goods that travelled by sea. Insurances, indeed, were first intended as instruments to protect oneself against unexpected events, and travelling by sea certainly meant having to face many unexpected situations. No wonder that the first insurance institutes were born in cities by the sea or by the river, like in the case of Florence, where the figure of the intermediary was first created in the 14th century, or Genoa, the city where the first insurance company was instituted (its name was Tam mari quam terra). Genoa is also the city where one of the first policies that we know was taken out by Raffaele Luxardo, member of one of the families that have gone down in the history of insurances. This policy, a document that was written by notary Teramo Maggiolo on the 21st February 1368, was taken out for Niccolò Becchignone’s ship, which was insured for 425 gold “perperi”.
Along with Genoa, another city that needs to be referred to when you deal with the history of insurances is certainly London. It was in the English city that the Lloyd’s were born, the name deriving from the name of the pub where the intermediaries of the cities used to meet. This pub was their favourite place because its owner kept a bulletin with information about the ships that were travelling by sea and that had been ensured. Moreover it was in London, after the big fire of 1666, that insurances began to be considered as useful instruments to protect the community, and it was in London, in the following century, that the idea of life insurance began to take shape.
In the following centuries the field of insurances has undergone many developments and the types of insurances have multiplied, “invading” many sectors of our life.
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