ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses how Max Weber came to study the topic of his dissertation and the major scholarly influences on his study. It presents a description and analysis of its contents and major arguments. There are two major writings of Weber in which he expressly made reference to the themes alluded to in 'The History of Commercial Partnerships: Economy and Society' and 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'. Weber made a clear distinction between the purely legal and economic ways of considering the development of society and he emphasized the possibility of a disharmonious development of legal principles and economic events. He also attempted to work out a dialectical relationship between the two areas, according to which economic relations can bring about legal ones, and legal regulations can influence economic consequences. For the longest time, sociological scholarship has ignored the fact that Weber's imperious concepts of Vergesellschaftung-Vergemeinschaftung were preconfigured in his dissertation.
