De wapenfabriek van Petrus Stevens

Samenvatting

In 1849 the Maastricht entrepreneur Petrus Stevens established an arms factory in Maastricht that supplied the Dutch army for most of the second half of the nineteenth century with muskets, rifles and side arms, such as pistols, revolvers, bayonets, sabers and knifes. This article highlights how he, in close cooperation with Lieutenant-Colonel Antoni Frederik Brade of the Dutch artillery, managed to do so in a period of major (inter)national political turbulence, technological developments and shifting market conditions and in a country where the arms industry was not indigenous.

After Petrus Stevens death, in 1863, his company was at first successfullycontinued by his four sons. However finally they lacked innovative power, which meant that no new products were successfully launched on the market. In 1880 the company was sold to the arms dealers Edouard de Beaumont and Leonard Soleil. But they also could not cope with rapid technological developments, which ultimately in 1900 led the closure of the factory.