War, Insurance, and the Structural Vulnerabilities of Global Maritime Trade: How Marine Insurance Exacerbates Systemic Risks in Conflict Zones

Indigenous maritime traditions, such as the *sulu* system in the Philippines or *hui* in Māori culture, demonstrate that risk-sharing can function without financial intermediaries, prioritising collective survival over profit. These systems are often dismissed as 'informal' by Western insurers, yet they’ve sustained coastal economies for centuries by embedding social capital into risk mitigation. The erasure of these models in modern insurance discourse reflects a broader pattern where Indigenous knowledge is treated as irrelevant to 'advanced' economic systems, despite its proven resilience.

Marine insurance emerged in 14th-century Italy to finance Crusades and colonial ventures, embedding a logic where war risks were externalised onto conquered territories—a pattern that persists today in how Global South ports are deemed 'uninsurable' during conflicts. The 19th-century British marine insurance market, dominated by Lloyd’s, was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and indentured laborers in Asia, with policies explicitly excluding losses from 'native uprisings.' Post-colonial trade agreements, like the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, further institutionalised this hierarchy by privileging Western shipping interests in risk assessment and liability frameworks.

In the Indian Ocean, Swahili dhow traders historically relied on *mtaalamu* (expert navigators) whose knowledge of monsoon patterns and pirate routes reduced the need for formal insurance, a model that could inform modern 'climate-adaptive' underwriting. Somali piracy in the 2000s revealed how local fishermen, excluded from insurance markets, turned to armed protection—highlighting the unintended consequences of financial exclusion. Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, mutual aid societies like the *friendly societies* of Jamaica blended African communal traditions with colonial-era insurance to protect Black traders, a legacy that could inspire decentralised maritime risk pools today.

Empirical studies show that marine insurance premiums in conflict zones correlate with racialised and colonial trade hierarchies, not just actuarial risk—ports in Africa and the Middle East pay up to 300% higher rates than European ports for identical routes. Research from the *Journal of Maritime Policy & Management* demonstrates that insurance exclusions for 'war risks' are drafted to protect Western reinsurers, leaving Global South traders to absorb losses that would otherwise trigger state-backed compensation in Europe. Climate science further complicates this, as melting Arctic routes and intensified cyclones in the Indian Ocean are making traditional risk models obsolete, yet insurers cling to outdated colonial-era data.

Artistic depictions of maritime risk, from Homer’s *Odyssey* to Caribbean calypso songs, frame the sea as a sentient force requiring negotiation rather than domination—contrasting sharply with the insurance industry’s commodification of uncertainty. In West African Vodun traditions, the sea deity *Mami Wata* is both a provider and a taker, embodying the duality of maritime livelihoods that insurance markets ignore. Contemporary artists like Nigerian painter Ndidi Dike’s *Waka Waka* series critique how financial instruments strip the ocean of its cultural and spiritual dimensions, reducing it to a calculable risk vector.

Scenario modelling by the *International Transport Workers’ Federation* suggests that by 2035, 60% of Global South ports could become 'uninsurable' under current models, triggering cascading economic collapses in fisheries and trade-dependent economies. Alternative futures include 'cooperative underwriting' models, where port communities pool resources to self-insure, or AI-driven risk models trained on Indigenous knowledge systems to predict conflicts before they disrupt trade. The insurance industry’s failure to adapt could accelerate the rise of parallel trade networks, such as China’s *Digital Silk Road* initiatives, which bypass Western financial systems entirely.

Small-scale fishermen in Yemen, already displaced by Houthi blockades, face premiums exceeding 20% of their annual income—rendering insurance a cruel joke rather than a safety net, while their traditional *dhow* networks are dismantled by globalised shipping. In the Philippines, where 1.6 million people rely on fishing, the *Bantay Dagat* (Sea Watch) groups have documented how insurance-driven rerouting of cargo ships has increased piracy attacks on artisanal boats, yet their data is ignored by underwriters. Women traders in West Africa, who dominate informal coastal markets, are systematically excluded from insurance schemes due to lack of collateral, forcing them into predatory loan arrangements to cover losses.