The Levant Company Between the English State and the Muslim World, 1581-1688

FAIN: FT-248726-16

Jason Cameron White
Appalachian State University (Boone, NC 28608-0001)

Preparation of a monograph on the English Levant Company, a trading company which had a monopoly on all English trade with the Ottomon Empire until 1754.

During the seventeenth century, the English Levant Company operated between two worlds. In England, it had to negotiate the many political tumults of the century, which included civil war, regicide, restoration, and revolution, as well as many calls to revoke its monopoly on all trade between England and the Ottoman Empire. On the other end of its trading network, the Company had to negotiate the complexities of the empire's administrative and legal apparatus, navigate Ottoman political turmoil, which included the murders of two Sultans, and establish working relationships with Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Jewish merchants, factors, growers, and traders. This project will analyze how the Company bridged these two worlds in order to better understand the origins of globalization, capitalism, the British Empire, and the historical relationship between the west and the Muslim world.