Project information

In 1802, Johannes van der Linden translated Robert Joseph Pothier’s Du contrat de société (1765) into Dutch for his fellow-compatriots because of ‘the large usefulness it would have with regard to contemporaneous socio-economic life’. Likewise, van der Linden introduced several ideal-type categories of private partnerships, like the general partnership (société générale, vennootschap onder firma) and the limited partnership (société en commandite, commanditaire vennootschap), into Dutch jurisprudence.

Originally, however, these partnership types had been devised by seventeenth-century French jurists, like Jacques Savary, while preparing the French Code de Commerce (1673). Ultimately, the reception of French corporate structures was formalized through the official introduction of the Napoleonic Code de Commerce in Belgium (1807) and the Netherlands (1811).

This project hypothesizes that an alternative methodology, principally based on the exploration of sources produced directly by the entrepreneurial community, will reveal an entirely new, much more diverse and dynamic image of corporate structures frequently used in the early modern Low Countries.

Displaying the true diversity and dynamics of early modern private partnerships requires a systematic analysis of partnership agreements concluded in at least three economic centres of the Low Countries. These centres are Liège, Amsterdam and Antwerp and have been chosen because of their appropriateness in light of tackling all deficiencies of the ideal-type approach. Each one of them constitutes a separate subproject within the overall project.

More information on the project as a whole can be found here.

More information on the three subprojects can be found here: Liège, Amsterdam and Antwerp.
 

Subproject 1: Early Modern Private Partnerships in Liège (1581-1795)
Already in a very early stage the city of Liège developed both a significant metallurgical industry as well as a uniquely organised exploitation of its coal mines. Due to their capital-intensiveness, suchlike industries engendered, already in the fourteenth century, the creation of private partnerships as a means of cost reduction. During the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries, new industries like glassmaking and the extraction of alum, sulphur and lead called for similar action. From the 1720s onwards, the need for capital grew even stronger with the appearance of the Newcomen steam engines. Not only the significance, but also the specific industrial nature and capital-intensiveness of the early modern Liège economy, renders the city into a most appropriate means to challenge the ideal-type narrative on private partnerships.

Whereas the city’s mining activities and metallurgical industries have been the object of numerous appraisable studies, the organisational and legal features of their enterprises hardly received scholarly attention. This lacuna in the history of company law in the Low Countries is most deplorable since preliminary, sample-based explorations of the Liège archives revealed considerable idiosyncrasies regarding the organisational and legal features of mining companies in early modern Liège.

In order to discover the overall legal and organisational features of Liège corporate structures, this subproject will primarily make use of notarized partnership agreements which can be found in the city’s notarial archives, currently preserved at the Liège Archives de l’Etat. Since contracting parties were not obliged to register their agreements officially, the set of industrial and mining companies can be expanded by means of an exploration of the exploitation concessions that were granted by Liège land owners to private partnerships.

Here, the archives of local ecclesiastical institutions in particular as well as those of the Liège Chambre des Finances are to be consulted in the first place.

Subproject 2: Early Modern Private Partnerships in Amsterdam (1585-1811)
Opting for a city like Amsterdam as the centre of a second subproject is obvious for various reasons. In addition to the availability of the necessary source material, the choice is motivated by the attested acquaintance of the city’s entrepreneurs with the idea of private partnerships. Secondly, there is the prosperity of the Amsterdam economy during the seventeenth century which attracted numerous foreign entrepreneurs from abroad. Such an influx presumably coincided with the transfer of innovative legal ideas, which renders the city into a suitable case to challenge the assumed chronological uniformity of the ideal-type narrative. Finally, there is the nearby presence of chartered companies, closely resembling modern joint stock companies. To what extent did their organisational and legal structure influence the modestly organized private partnerships, or vice versa?

Still, whereas economic historians do acknowledge their significance within (specific sectors of) the overall economic system and showed a manifest interest in the partenrederij as the presumed origin of limited liability in the city, nor they nor legal historians ever deferred private partnerships to a systematic and in-depth analysis on the basis of notarized partnership agreements.

This subproject will therefore examine the organisational structure and legal characteristics of those private partnerships established in the city of Amsterdam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In order to do so, he will make use of those partnership agreements that have been registered by notaries who were active in the city of Amsterdam, and whose protocol books are currently being preserved in the Amsterdam Stadsarchief.

Subproject 3: Early Modern Private Partnerships in Antwerp (1608-1807)
Whereas Amsterdam constitutes an excellent example of a growing economy, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Antwerp provides a case of opposite economic circumstances. After experiencing an unseen economic prosperity during the long sixteenth century, the Antwerp market turned into decline. Likewise, the city embodies an appropriate subject to assess the impact of degenerating economic circumstances on the further development of private partnerships.

There is, however, a more important ground to incorporate a city like Antwerp into the overall project. No other city or region in the early modern Low Countries recorded its commercial practices as often and extensive as the city of Antwerp did. The customary compilations of 1582 (Consuetudines impressae) and 1608 (Consuetudines compilatae) each comprised hundreds of articles on commercial practices. Whereas the 1582 compilation did not distinguish between various types of private partnerships yet, its 1608 successor demonstrates some initial attempts of categorization. Therefore, Antwerp serves as an ideal case study in order to examine the relationship between the merchant community, on the one hand, and the municipal authorities and their statutory legislation, on the other hand.

The frequent use of private partnerships in Antwerp during the early modern period has been attested sufficiently so far, while simultaneously their sixteenth-century organisational and legal features have already been the object of a systematic analysis. Unfortunately, these observations were still troubled by the shortcomings of the ideal-type approach. Therefore, this subproject will re-analyse the sixteenth-century data along the lines of a concept-free approach and, more importantly, expand his analysis to partnership agreements notarized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and currently preserved in the Antwerp City Archives. Such expansion is crucial for a proper examination of the real significance of the 1608 Consuetudines compilatae.