“Underwriting Risk in the 18th century” provides the first systematic analysis of the application of probabilistic mathematics to the trade in enslaved Africans during the designated period. It will provide foundational research for an exploration of the relationship between the marine insurance industry and the trans-Atlantic trade in human beings across more than one hundred years. This research is comprised of three activities that will produce two outcomes. The first activity involves systematically consulting the remaining records of every known Lloyd’s of London-affiliated underwriter in order to ascertain the extant information on the insurance of slave voyages through London’s largest insurance market. The second activity entails a reevaluation of insurance-focused archival collections for records pertaining to the trade of enslaved Africans as well as a reevaluation of slavery-focused archival collections for records pertaining to insurance. The third activity we intend to engage in is preliminary archival research on the relationship between the slave trade and insurance in Spain, Holland, and Switzerland as well as the insurance of slave-produced goods returning to Europe. The first result of our funded activities will be the foundational research that I use to comprehensively analyze how monetary value was produced and inscribed during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The second result of our funded activities will be a vastly expanded data set to include in the digital ledger I founded and direct, Treasury of Weary Souls, which currently provides interactive, public access to all known insurance policies that underwrote enslaved persons as property on the plantations of the antebellum American South.