{"id":4864,"date":"2025-06-07T17:07:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T15:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/vitrine\/thy-cities-shall-with-commerce-shine-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T15:13:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T13:13:14","slug":"thy-cities-shall-with-commerce-shine-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"vitrine","link":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/vitrine\/thy-cities-shall-with-commerce-shine-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Thy Cities Shall With Commerce Shine \u2014 Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Thy Cities Shall With Commerce Shine<\/em> is an ongoing research project that questions whether the Lloyd\u2019s of London building\u2014located in the heart of the City\u2014should hold its status as a Grade I listed monument. It is Britain\u2019s youngest monument, yet its legacy is deeply entwined with the transatlantic slave trade.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lloyd\u2019s 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\u2019s building, positioned to be within walking distance as most of this insurance is still underwritten face to face.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Lloyd\u2019s is also the only place in the world where Kidnap and Ransom insurance (K&amp;R) is underwritten. It is widely believed that this form of insurance began in the 1930s after the kidnapping of an aristocrat\u2019s son. Historian Anita Rupprecht, in her 2007 paper <em>\u201c<\/em><em>Excessive Memories: Slavery, Insurance and Resistance,\u201d<\/em> traces the origins of K&amp;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.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Today, K&amp;R is primarily used by extractive multinational corporations (MNC\u2019s) operating in regions they classify as \u2018high risk\u2019. 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\u2019s roots in colonialism. Early forms of MNC\u2019s were called joint stock companies, and were granted powers to become colonising corporations for Europe. Modern K&amp;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4805,"template":"","exposition":[51],"class_list":["post-4864","vitrine","type-vitrine","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","exposition-en17"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vitrine\/4864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vitrine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/vitrine"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"exposition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artaucentre.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exposition?post=4864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}