Liverpool merchants versus Ohmi merchants: how and why they dealt with risk and insurance differently

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to intensively discuss and carefully compare the Liverpool merchants of Britain and the Ohmi merchants of Japan in a historical perspective. The question of much interest is how and why those two merchants dealt with risk and insurance differently. In his later years, J. R. Hicks made a great contribution to the theory of economic history. He paid a special attention to the rise of the market in which the merchant played as the main actor of the history theater. According to the Hicks doctrine, the relation between theory and history should not be one-to-one, but rather flexible to a certain degree. Therefore, it would be quite interesting to compare the Liverpool merchants of Britain and the Ohmi merchants of Japan. It will be seen that they were engaged in their respective triangular trade, producing their respective socioeconomic systems. In short, we have to take a pluralistic view to fully understand the concept of risk and insurance from the viewpoint of economic history.