The organization of mercantile capitalism in the Low Countries: private partnerships in early modern Antwerp (1480-1620).

Abstract

By means of an in-depth analysis of 132 partnership agreements, which had been notarized in the city of Antwerp between 1480 and 1620, the present article aspires to provide a substantiated narrative on the use as well as legal features of private partnerships in the early modern Low Countries. In so doing, it became apparent that such small-scale partnerships constituted an effective means in the hands of, mostly non-related, merchants and craftsmen who were looking for legal certainty. Moreover, the examination of these partnership agreements demonstrated the wide-ranging contractual freedom that contracting parties in sixteenth-century Antwerp could dispose of and that therefore historical reality not necessarily complies with legal ideas and concepts provided for by legislative or statutory documents.