Levant Company
Portrait in Turkish costume of Turkey merchant Francis Levett (1700–1764), chief representative of the Levant Company at Constantinople 1737–1750. After the painting by Jean-Étienne Liotard in the Louvre Museum. National Portrait Gallery, London.
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| Industry | International trade |
|---|---|
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Predecessor | The Venice Company and The Turkey Company |
| Successor | Duke of Leeds, Stratford Canning |
| Founded | 1581 |
| Founder | Sir Edward Osborn |
| Defunct | 1825 |
| Headquarters | London, Aleppo, Ottoman Empire |
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Number of locations
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various across Europe and Near East |
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Area served
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Eastern Mediterranean |
| Products | Rum and spices; cloth: cottons and woollens, kerseys, indigo, gall, camlet; tin, pewter, maroquin, soda ash. |
| Services | Trade and commerce |
| Total assets | Merchant shipping |
| Total equity | Joint-stock capital company |
| Owner | Great Britain |
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Number of employees
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6,000 |
| Parent | English Crown |
| Divisions | Turkish, Levantine, Venetian littoral |
The Levant Company was an English chartered company formed in 1592. Its initial charter, awarded on 11 September 1581, was good for seven years. It was granted to Edward Osborne, Richard Staper, Thomas Smith and William Garret with the purpose of regulating English trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Levant. The Company remained in continuous existence until being superseded in 1825. A member of the Company was known as a Turkey Merchant. Its charter was approved by Elizabeth I of England as a result of the merger between the Venice Company (1583) and the Turkey Company (1581), following the expiration of their charters, as she was anxious to maintain trade and political alliances with the Ottoman Empire.
Its origins lay in the Italian trade with Constantinople, and the wars against the Turk in Hungary, although a parallel was routed to Morocco and the Barbary Coast on a similar trade winds as early as 1413. The collapse of the Venetian empire, high tariffs, and defeat of the Genoese at Scio and Chios had left a vacuum that was filled by a few intrepid adventurers in their own cog vessels with endeavour to reopen trade with the East on their own accounts. Following a decline in trade with the Levant over a number of decades, several London merchants petitioned Queen Elizabeth I in 1580 for a charter to guarantee exclusivity when trading in that region. In 1580 a treaty was signed between England and the Ottoman Empire, giving English merchants trading rights similar to those enjoyed by French merchants. In 1582 William Harborne, an English merchant who had carried out most of the treaty negotiations in Constantinople to French protestations, made himself permanent envoy. But by 1586 Harborne was appointed 'Her Majesty's ambassador' to the Ottoman Empire, with all his expenses (including gifts given to the Sultan and his court) to be paid by the Levant Company. When the charters of both the Venice Company and the Turkey Company expired, both companies were merged into the Levant Company in 1592 after Queen Elizabeth I approved its charter as part of her diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire.
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Wikipedia