Thy Cities Shall With Commerce Shine — Part II

Thy Cities Shall With Commerce Shine is an ongoing research project that questions whether the Lloyd’s of London building—located in the heart of the City—should hold its status as a Grade I listed monument. It is Britain’s youngest monument, yet its legacy is deeply entwined with the transatlantic slave trade.

Lloyd’s of London is an insurance marketplace known for underwriting specialised risks. The brokers who operate within its system are clustered in a ring of buildings around the central Lloyd’s building, positioned to be within walking distance as most of this insurance is still underwritten face to face.

Lloyd’s is also the only place in the world where Kidnap and Ransom insurance (K&R) is underwritten. It is widely believed that this form of insurance began in the 1930s after the kidnapping of an aristocrat’s son. Historian Anita Rupprecht, in her 2007 paper “Excessive Memories: Slavery, Insurance and Resistance,” traces the origins of K&R to the transatlantic slave trade. Then, it served two purposes: to enable the kidnapping of Africans, and to protect Europeans from a fear of being kidnapped themselves.

Today, K&R is primarily used by extractive multinational corporations (MNC’s) operating in regions they classify as ‘high risk’. These same regions often bear the scars of historical exploitation and systemic destabilisation by Western capitalist interests. The form of a MNC, too, has it’s roots in colonialism. Early forms of MNC’s were called joint stock companies, and were granted powers to become colonising corporations for Europe. Modern K&R becomes a tool that not only enables the continuation of exploitative global commerce but also echoes the very systems that once profited from human trafficking and death at sea.