The proposed project is designed to serve the most fundamental aim of the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, i.e. the development of the career of the applicant. In the concrete, the fellowship as well as the proposed research will enable the applicant to prepare himself for the position of full professor of comparative legal history of the Meuse-Rhine region at the Law Faculty of Maastricht University (Netherlands). Therefore, the proposed research is designed to reach two overall objectives that are inextricably bound up with reaching the aforementioned position of professional maturity in the medium-term: (1) the enhancement of the applicant’s expertise on the historical development of law in the Meuse-Rhine region, and (2) the improvement of the applicant’s international renown as a scholar. As a result, the applicant will improve his future career prospects in the most efficient way possible while contributing largely to the excellence and competitiveness of the European Research Area (ERA).In order to meet the first objective, the applicant will study the organisational structure and legal aspects of early modern private partnerships in the cities of Maastricht, Liège and Aachen. By identifying the various types of private partnerships within the region, supplemented by a reconstruction of actual corporate practices applied by merchants and craftsmen in the respective cities, the applicant will not only improve his expertise on the comparative legal history of the Meuse-Rhine region, but he will also adjust our currently distorted understanding of companies and company law in the early modern period. In order to meet the second objective, i.e. the enhancement of his renown as an international scholar, the applicant will interpret the results of his archival research in the light of internationally, heavily debated topics as there are the myth of the customary law merchant and the origins of early modern capitalism.