The Setting
The Setting
Marine Insurance and Bills of Exchange
This chapter examines the quotation claiming that Jews invented marine insurance and bills of exchange, which can be read from a compilation of maritime laws assembled with commentary by a provincial French lawyer, Étienne Cleirac, published in Bordeaux under the title Us et coustumes de la mer (Usages and Customs of the Sea). By adding bills of exchange to his commentary on marine insurance, Cleirac paired two credit contracts that by the mid-seventeenth century had become indispensable to long-distance trade and were handled by merchants of all sorts. By this time, marine insurance was no longer considered usurious. In contrast, bills of exchange continued to ignite fierce debates over usury. The ease with which bills of exchange could be passed from one person to another generated the erroneous but indelible impression that they were like paper money. However, unlike banknotes, they were not fully negotiable, nor were payers obliged to accept them.
Keywords: Jews, marine insurance, bills of exchange, maritime laws, Étienne Cleirac, credit contracts, long-distance trade, usury, paper money, banknotes
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
