Trading With the Ottomans ─ The Levant Company in the Middle East

Trade is the engine of history, and the acceleration in what scholars call 'globalism' from the beginning of the last millennium has been driven by communities interacting with each other through commerce and exchange. The Ottoman Empire was a trading partner that spanned the globe, and was therefore the primary link between the West and the Middle East in the 15th to the 19th century. The Levant Company traded British manufacturing with the Ottomans for two centuries, hiring de facto ambassadors, locals, explorers and adventurers and tradesmen. It set up 'factories' (trading posts) across the Ottoman lands and traded skins, textiles, crafts and spices. Here Vlami Despina focuses on the company's long decline - utilizing new archival research she unpicks this crucial partnership and assesses it's important to the modern world.

Despina Vlami is Senior Researcher at the Academy of Athens where she directs a research program on Trade and Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean.