خرید و دانلود نسخه کامل کتاب Trading with the Ottomans: The Levant Company in the Middle East – Original PDF

he Levant Company was an English chartered company that traded in the Levant from the late sixteenth century to the 1820s. A chartered company was a type of corporation that evolved in sixteenth-century Europe and operated under a charter granted by a sovereign authority. The charter conferred to a group of traders, or a number of shareholders, a trading monopoly in a specific geographical area or for a specific type of trade. Chartered companies have been generally considered concurrent and instrumental to the growth of long-distance trade in the early-modern period.1 The English, French and Dutch governments encouraged chartered companies to assist trade and promote overseas exploration, driving private resources to pursue foreign trade policies when treasury resources were limited.2 Early trading companies founded in England under a royal charter were usually formed as joint-stock or regulated companies. In the first case, the organisation itself engaged in business, operating with the joint capital invested by members, each of whom shared in the profits and losses proportionally. This was the case of the Muscovy (1555 – 1746), East India (1600 – 1858), Hudson’s Bay (1670) and Royal African (1672 – 1712) companies. In a regulated company – as was the case of the Levant Company and the Merchant Adventurers (founded in 1407) – each company member operated independently following his own strategy and using his own resources and capital. Members were nevertheless obliged under oath to comply with the company’s regulations and pay taxes.3