Levant Company

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English Turkey Merchant Francis Levett (1700–1764), main representative of the Levant Company in Constantinople 1737–1750, Levett in Turkish clothing, painting in the Louvre Museum by Jean-Étienne Liotard

Levant Company was an English trading company with headquarters in London .

The trading company was created in 1592 through the merger of the Turkey Company and the Venice Company and primarily traded in the Eastern Mediterranean. The company's presidents included the English businessman Edward Osborne and Richard Staper .

Trivia

Through Thomas Darley , who works for the Levant Company in Aleppo , the Levant Company has had considerable influence on the breeding of the English thoroughbred . In 1702 Darley bought the young Arab stallion Darley Arabian from a nomadic Bedouin tribe and exported him to England in 1704, where he was used as a breeding stallion at Aldby Park , the seat of the Darley family. Christopher McGrath calls this the most significant transaction in horse breeding history. Today 95 percent of all living English thoroughbreds can be traced back to this stallion.

literature

  • M. Epstein: The Early History of the Levant Company , Dutton, New York 1908 ( online , PDF).
  • Alfred C. Wood: A History of the Levant Company , Oxford University Press, 1935, reprinted 1964.
  • Christine Laidlaw: The British in the Levant: Trade and Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century , IB Tauris 2010, ISBN 978-1848853355 .
  • Despina Vlami: Trading with the Ottomans: The Levant Company in the Middle East , IBTauris 2015, ISBN 978-1780768892 .

Single receipts

  1. Christopher McGrath: Mr. Darley's Arabian - High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life: A History of Racing in Twenty-Five Horses . John Murray, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-84854-984-5 . E-book position 333
  2. Christopher McGrath: Mr. Darley's Arabian - High Life, Low Life, Sporting Life: A History of Racing in Twenty-Five Horses . John Murray, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-84854-984-5 . E-book position 444.
  3. 95% of thoroughbreds linked to one superstud . In: New Scientist , September 6, 2005.