{
  "id": "seguros-maritimos-de-la-carrera-de-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Marine insurance on the Carrera de Indias: the underwriting code an official of the Casa de Contratación wrote down in 1672",
  "summary": "The 1672 manual of the Seville Indies trade describes a working insurance market: printed policy forms, a registered broker forbidden to underwrite, a cap on hull cover, general average, abandonment of a missing ship after eighteen months, a four-year long-stop. One rule computes bad faith — a policy on a ship already lost is void if news could have reached the insured at a league an hour. Its author, a judge of the Casa, records that the bar on underwriters sitting as Prior was ignored.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "commercial-law",
    "insurance",
    "maritime",
    "trade",
    "law",
    "seville",
    "carrera-de-indias",
    "spanish-empire",
    "institutions",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "risk",
    "books"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-1672"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ordenanzas-de-bilbao-1737"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "manila-galleon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mercado-summa-de-tratos-y-contratos"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "azpilcueta-comentario-resolutorio-de-cambios"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "reglamento-de-comercio-libre-1778"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "Did Spain have marine insurance for the Indies trade?",
    "How did a marine insurance policy work in the seventeenth-century Carrera de Indias?",
    "What was a póliza de seguro and who drew it up?",
    "What happened if an insured ship went missing?",
    "Could a broker underwrite insurance under Spanish commercial law?",
    "What is haberia gruesa (general average) in Spanish law?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Book II, chapter XIX of Veitia Linaje's Norte de la contratación is headed \"De los seguros, y asseguradores de la Navegación de la Carrera de las Indias\", and it opens with a definition of insurance as risk-pooling that names its own perils. \"NO ay cosa mas consequente al navegar, q los riesgos, y la providencia mercátil introduxo medio que assegurasse dellos; mediante el qual se reparten las ganancias, y cautelandose vnos para no incidir en alguna total ruina, hazen inteligencia otros, que les ha enriquecido, esto es assegurando que no se perderà tal Nao, ni tal mercaderia en ella cargada, y que si se perdiere por tormenta, ò otro accidente del mar, viento, fuego, enemigos, y amigos, y otro qualquier caso (excepto barateria de Patron, ò mancamiéto de mercaderias) la pagarà, haziendo esta obligacion por causa de recibir el precio en que se convienen\". Storm, sea accident, wind, fire, enemies and friends are covered; the master's barratry and the inherent unsoundness of the goods are excluded; the premium is the consideration.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The instrument has a name, a maker and a printed form. The document \"(à el qual llaman Poliça)\" is drawn \"por medio de vn corredor de Lonja\" and must recite the ship or the merchandise insured, \"de que parte a que parte, si es haziendo escalas, ò no la Nao\"; each underwriter then signs the amount he takes, the broker signs last, \"y haze tanta fee como si se otorgasse ante qualquiera escrivano publico\" — the policy carrying the faith of a notarial instrument on the broker's signature alone. And the forms were in print: whoever wants to see how these writings are made \"las hallarà impressas, como lo està las del Consulado, có las comunes de la Casa de la Cótratacion.\" Standard-form policies, one set issued by the merchant guild and one by the crown's own trade house, were on sale in Seville before 1672.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Underwriting was a registered activity. \"Los Corredores de seguros deven tener libro en que assienten las Poliças que hizieren con dia, mes, y año, personas, cantidades, y precios pena de 10U maravedis, y privacion de oficio, y que pague el interes de la parte\" — a chronological register of every policy with parties, sums and rates, on pain of ten thousand maravedís, loss of office and the injured party's interest. Signing on another's behalf was allowed only on showing the powers to the Prior and Cónsules, who licensed it and kept a copy before an escribano of the Casa, contravention costing twenty thousand maravedís divided between the royal chamber and the guild's costs; and whoever underwrote for another had to declare it in the policy.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Broking and underwriting were kept apart, and the limits on what could be insured are moral-hazard rules in everything but name. \"Ningun Corredor puede firmar seguro, por sí, ni por otro, ni otra persona por èl pena de perdimiento del oficio, y de 30U maravedis para la Camara, Consulado, y denunciador por tercias partes.\" Artillery, tackle and freight could not be insured at all, \"y si se hiziere serà nulo el seguro\"; the hull could be covered only to two-thirds of its value, on a policy apart and not mixed with merchandise, and that outbound to the Indies, the homeward figure needing the licence of the Prior and Cónsules. Cédulas of 22 October 1587 and 25 May 1588 added that money was not to be taken \"a cambio\" on the ship nor the ship insured beyond a third, insurance for more being void with the underwriters returning the premium less half a per cent. Veitia dates the governing ordinances to 14 July 1556.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "One rule turns good faith into arithmetic, and it is the sentence in the chapter most worth quoting whole. \"Si se hiziere seguro de Nao à tiempo que ya estava perdida, y huviere sido la perdida en lugar que por tierra lo pueda aver sabido el asegurado, interviniendo tiempo a razon de legua por hora, es nulo el seguro, y solo devera el assegurador bolver el premio que recibiere, deteniendo el medio por ciento.\" Whether the insured could have known of the casualty is not left to proof of what he knew: it is computed from the distance and a stipulated speed of news overland of one league per hour. A doctrine of imputed knowledge with a published propagation rate, in a compilation of ordinances printed in 1672.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "A missing ship becomes a claim by a rule of time, and the loss is transferred rather than merely paid. \"Passado año y medio sin parecer Nao assegurada, o mercaderia registrada en ella, se tiene por perdida, lo qual se ha de cótar desde el dia, que se supiere que salió del Puerto donde tomó carga, y se deve cobrar el riesgo haziendo dexació el assegurado en los asseguradores\" — eighteen months from the sailing, then presumption of loss and abandonment of the subject-matter to the underwriters. Where the insurance is at an agreed value the sum is understood to include principal, premium and all costs, \"excepto en las poliças de venida de Indias sobre oro, plata, y frutos, que està prohibido assegurar el costo del seguro, y en todo se deve estar al juramento del cargador\" — homeward policies on bullion and produce being barred from insuring the premium itself, with the shipper's oath as the measure.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "General average is stated in the form it still has. \"El riesgo de cosa alijada à la mar, o descargada por beneficio de todos se deve repartir por Haberia gruessa entre la Nao, sus fletes, y toda la carga que lleva, có que no aya sido la ocasion forçosa, ni téga culpa el Maestre\": what is jettisoned or landed for the common benefit is contributed for by hull, freight and the whole lading together, subject to the master being without fault. The guild kept people to work the figures — the electors chose from among themselves and the other merchants five Diputados \"à concertar las partes, ver las Haberias, y repartimientos\".",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The chapter runs on limitation periods and unwind rules of a kind a modern policy would recognise. Premium fell due within three months of signature and without demand, failing which the underwriter did not run the risk though he might claim the premium later; if all or part of what was insured went unloaded the insured could recover his premium within fifteen days of the ship's sailing and lost it afterwards; a cancelled policy cost the insured half a per cent to the underwriter. Notice of loss or average had to be given to the underwriters within two years of the signature, on pain of losing the claim, with two further years to bring the proofs, \"con que no pedida dentro de quatro años desde el dia de la firma de la poliça quedan libres los asseguradores\". All policies were cancelled after two years as to any part on which the risk had not run, the underwriter returning the premium less his half per cent.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "Two clauses show the market handling problems it had evidently met. Everything loaded anywhere on the Guadalquivir counts as loaded at Seville, and the underwriters run the risk of goods carried out to the ships in lighters \"aunque no lo diga la poliça\" — river carriage swept into the policy by default rather than by bargain. And where a cargo was over-insured, the excess was unwound by seniority of signature rather than rateably: \"deven ir fuera los vltimos asseguradores que firmaron (aunque sean todos en vn dia) sin perder ni ganar, si no es el medio por ciento.\" Standing to claim, and to abandon, lay with the person to whom the goods were consigned in the register or who had loaded them, \"y qualquiera de los dos puede hazer dexacion\".",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The cost is on the record in the author's own voice, and it is a confession of non-enforcement by a serving officer of the institution he is describing. A cédula of 13 June 1554 provided \"que los mercaderes tratantes en Indias, que arrendassen los Almoxarifazgos, ò assegurassen, perdiessen la accion a ser Prior, ò Consul, y que si despues de serlo entrassen en el arrendamiéto, ò hiziessen seguros, incurriessen en privacion, y fuessen nombrados otros\" — underwriters barred from the bench of the merchant tribunal that would judge insurance disputes. Veitia writes that the rule has been observed as to the tax farms, \"persuadome à que se ha faltado à ella, en lo que mira à los seguros, porque he conocido en los puestos de Prior, y Consul, personas que han sido asseguradores\", and gives the structural reason: underwriting is sought from the merchants of largest capital, who are exactly the men the ordinances want elected, so the two requirements collide. He calls insurance \"vno de los tratos mas importantes, y honestos\", concedes that the prohibition \"es rigurosa ley, pero en fin es ley\", and concludes that its observance should be pressed while it stands unrepealed.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "A second printed witness gives the same broker rule and cites the same numbered ordinance, which is why it is worth citing at all. Hevia Bolaños's Curia Philipica, in the chapter on Corredores of tomo II, libro I, states: \"Tampoco ningun Corredor puede hacer seguros de naves, mercaderías, ni cosas, ni firmarlos por sí, ni por otro. Y ninguna persona puede hacer estos seguros por ningun Corredor, so las penas puestas por una Ordenanza del Consulado Sevillano\", with the marginal authority \"Ord. n. 31\" — the same ordinance number Veitia's margin gives for the same prohibition. Two works of very different kinds, a manual of the Indies trade house and a general handbook for merchants and their consulados, and two printings a century and a quarter apart, carry the rule in the same terms. The confidence is set below the transcriptions because neither witness prints the ordinance, and the Ordenanzas del Consulado de Sevilla were not opened here to confirm that the two citations point at the same text.",
      "sources": [
        "hevia-bolanos-curia-philipica-madrid-1790",
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c12",
      "text": "What was read here is a rulebook and a handbook, and the limits follow from that. No policy, no premium rate, no claim file, no adjustment and no series of losses was opened, so nothing in this object supports any statement about how large the Seville insurance market was, what it charged, or whether it paid. Veitia prints the rules and one admission that a rule was not kept; that admission is evidence about the Consulado's bench, not a measure of the market. The Curia Philipica volume read here is the corrected Madrid impression of 1790, whose title page announces that errata and wrong citations of earlier printings have been mended, so no claim is made about the work's first edition or about which readings are the author's own; and its maritime book, where the insurance contract is treated at length, was not read — only the terrestrial book's chapter on brokers. Nothing was read from the American side: no consulado of Mexico or Lima record, and no Spanish-American policy, appears here.",
      "sources": [
        "veitia-norte-de-la-contratacion-sevilla-1672",
        "hevia-bolanos-curia-philipica-madrid-1790"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Marine insurance in the Spanish Atlantic is normally met in English through Lloyd's: London coffee-house underwriting is told as the origin, and Seville appears, if at all, as a closed system that traded under licence and therefore had nothing worth calling a market. The chapter that answers this has been in print since 1672 and is almost never quoted. Written from Veitia Linaje's own pages — he sat as a judge of the Casa de Contratación and wrote the book from inside it — this object gives the mechanism rather than the impression: printed standard-form policies sold by both the guild and the crown's trade house; a licensed broker who keeps a dated register of every policy and is barred on pain of office from underwriting one; a two-thirds cap on hull cover and a bar on insuring freight and artillery; a three-month premium term, a fifteen-day refund window, an eighteen-month presumption of loss with abandonment to the underwriters, and a four-year long-stop; general average apportioned across hull, freight and cargo; and a rule voiding a policy on a ship already lost that measures the insured's presumed knowledge at a league of overland news per hour. It then declines to leave the institution looking better than the evidence allows, by printing the passage where the same official records that the 1554 bar on underwriters holding the guild's presidency was not being kept, names the reason — underwriting needs the richest merchants, who are the men the ordinances want elected — and still concludes that a harsh law is a law until it is repealed.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-19",
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    "name": "Marine insurance on the Carrera de Indias: the underwriting code an official of the Casa de Contratación wrote down in 1672",
    "description": "The 1672 manual of the Seville Indies trade describes a working insurance market: printed policy forms, a registered broker forbidden to underwrite, a cap on hull cover, general average, abandonment of a missing ship after eighteen months, a four-year long-stop. One rule computes bad faith — a policy on a ship already lost is void if news could have reached the insured at a league an hour. Its author, a judge of the Casa, records that the bar on underwriters sitting as Prior was ignored.",
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        "name": "Norte de la contratacion de las Indias Occidentales",
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