Trading with the Ottomans

'Trading with the Ottomans: The Levant Company in the Middle East' by Despina Vlami (IB Tauris, £62, 304 pages)

There has been quite a lot of high-minded moaning in recent years about the conversion of British missions abroad into little more than commercial outposts for U.K. In the words of journalist Luke Harding, Prime Minister David Cameron's foreign policy objective is "quite simple: to sell stuff to foreigners." In fact, British embassies have always prioritized trade. In many cases trade is the reason they were established in the first place. 

The East India Company is by far the most famous example: A powerful multinational corporation with a private army, tax-collecting powers, and responsibility for British diplomatic interests in the subcontinent. The company ultimately paved the way for the formal conquest of India by the British Empire. Similar but less well known was the Levant Company. Founded in 1580 with the granting of concessions to protect English trade in the Ottoman Empire, the company represented England diplomatically in the Ottoman Empire for over two centuries. The first English ambassador to Constantinople, William Harborne, was also the head of the Levant Company. 

"Trading with the Ottomans" by Greek academic Despina Vlami focuses on the final transitional decades of the company before it was dissolved in 1825. It is a granular and deeply researched book, and certainly not one for the general reader. But it does give a good idea of the company's broader trajectory and wider historical significance.

Trade is very often the motor of history. The Levant Company was part of an expanding British network of merchant trade and commerce. The great Mediterranean ports of the Ottoman Empire - Smyrna (?zmir),...