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Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s eminent minister, has long been famous for his commercial and maritime reforms during the grand siècle. Through his reforming agenda, Colbert sought to wield the power of the state to establish French economic hegemony within Europe. But one distinctive reform has been widely ignored up to now: despite targeted interventions into insurance practices by Colbert during his tenure, the French insurance industry never took off before 1750, long after the English and Dutch insurance industries had reached maturity. This paper explores these failed interventions through studying Louis XIV’s insurance chambers, established in Paris under the auspices of Colbert and his son, the Marquis de Seignelay. It explores the motivations behind, and operations of, these chambers and why they ultimately failed to meet the expectations of their illustrious patrons. Although the underwriters of these chambers made dubious decisions that severely limited the scale and success of their activities, they were also impaired by the French state’s ill-fated interventions into insurance practices and maritime law, which forced them to underwrite against an unusual array of maritime risks. The chambers therefore serve as illuminating case studies for examining Colbert’s ambitious quest for state control in maritime and commercial affairs.

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About Lewis Wade: Lewis Wade is a PhD student at the University of Exeter, working as part of the ERC-funded AveTransRisk project. He previously received his BA from the University of Cambridge.