Underwriters of the United States

Hannah Farber is professor of history at Columbia University.

"Fascinating, deeply researched, and well-written. . . . Underwriters of the United States is an important, lively, and provocative contribution that will become a touchstone for future scholarship on the relationship between early American business and the state."-Economic History Association "One cannot fail to admire the work [Farber] has done to bring together disparate and difficult archives in a truly original account of the formation of the American state and financial institutions. This book is a much-awaited prequel to works by Sharon Ann Murphy, Jonathan Levy and Ulrich Beck . . . and it will be enjoyed by as broad an audience."-International Journal of Maritime History "Underwriters of the United States is an excellent book in every respect, full of fresh insight into an overlooked aspect of the history of the new republic. . . .Deeply researched, smartly written . . . provides a new gloss on the early history of the United States."-Sea History "Marshaling an array of legal, personal, corporate, quantitative, and printed sources, Farber argues that marine insurance established itself as an essential and autonomous component of the American political economic system from the earliest days of the Revolutionary War. . . . [A] valuable new addition to scholarship on the American state and political economy."-H-Early-America "Property insurance is everywhere, but it is rarely prominent in the public mind. . . .This excellent academic analysis of underwriting in the American shipping industry, up until 1860, has much to say about America today. . . . As Farber's entire book shows, insurance is, and always has been, a political business."-American Affairs Journal "In this remarkably well-researched work . . . Hannah Farber adds to the origins [of America] the unexpected but no less essential element of marine insurance, showing how vital it was in founding the American republic."-American Historical Review "With its broad source basis, intriguing historiographical intervention, and stimulating conceptual framework, Underwriters of the United States will undoubtedly generate a host of new discussions at the intersection of American political economy, nation-building, and the place of the United States, past and present, in an increasingly globalizing world."-Journal of the Early Republic "Underwriters of the United States is an excellent book in every respect, full of fresh insight into an overlooked aspect of the history of the new republic. . . . Deeply researched, smartly written . . . [it] provides a new gloss on the early history of the United States."-Sea History "Fascinating, deeply researched, and well-written. . . . Underwriters of the United States is an important, lively, and provocative contribution that will become a touchstone for future scholarship on the relationship between early American business and the state."-Economic History Association "One cannot fail to admire the work [Farber] has done to bring together disparate and difficult archives in a truly original account of the formation of the American state and financial institutions. This book is a much-awaited prequel to works by Sharon Ann Murphy, Jonathan Levy and Ulrich Beck . . . and it will be enjoyed by as broad an audience."-International Journal of Maritime History