News
PhD Defence Posthumus alumnus Patrick Naaktgeboren
On 11 January 2024, Posthumus alumnus Patrick Naaktgeboren successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Private partnerships in early modern Antwerp (1621–1791) at Maastricht University. Promotores were Professor Bram Van Hofstraeten (Maastricht University) and Professor Jeroen Puttevils (University of Antwerp).
Patricks dissertation investigates private partnerships in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Antwerp (1621–1791) from both a legal historical and a socioeconomic perspective. Whereas the legal-historical part deals with the interaction between Antwerp customary law and learned legal literature (the ‘law in books’) related to business practices in the form of notarised and privately drafted agreements (the ‘law in practice’), the socioeconomic historical part focuses on the functions a partnership could fulfil in an early modern society. The aim of this dissertation is to gain more insight into the extent to which customary law affected business practices and the extent to which entrepreneurs adhered to the rules. Additionally, his dissertation challenges the categorisation often used in the literature whereby partnerships are grouped into ideal-types, such as general partnerships and limited partnerships. Finally, this dissertation analyses the underlying arguments for entrepreneurs to opt for a partnership. For this purpose, the city of Antwerp serves as an excellent case study because entrepreneurs were forced to adapt themselves continuously to geopolitical and socioeconomic developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The PhD defense will also be broadcasted as livestream. The N.W. Posthumus staff congratulates Patrick with obtaining his PhD.
