To a large extent the present volume deals with merchants established on Ottoman territory for a long time. Whether they were subjects of the sultans or not will be considered of secondary importance; but many if not most of them probably fell into that category. 'Hard to pin down' traders also occur; in particular we have included a number of studies discussing people who started their lives as Ottoman subjects but whose business activities took them to Venice or the Habsburg territories, where some of them struck roots. Such situations after all form part of the life stories of merchants anywhere; and given the broad expanses of sea and land that many Mediterranean traders traversed, it makes sense to adopt as broad a perspective as possible.

This study analyses the dynamics between the non-Muslim merchant elites of Ankara and Izmir (mostly Greeks and Armenians) and their European competitors in the 18th century, particularly the mohair trade in Ankara, and Ottoman infiltration of the Dutch trade between Amsterdam and Izmir.

The main objective of this book is to dispel some of the conventionally-held views surrounding trade between Europe and Asia in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. For instance, through a comparative and comprehensive study of merchant communities, markets and commodities, the individual authors demonstrate that Asian merchants were in no way inferior to Europeans in terms of their commercial operations and business acumen. The book as a whole attempts to view trade between Europe and Asia in its totality and emphasizes similarities rather than differences in the two regions.

A readable and authoritative account of the economic development of the early Ottoman state.

Arguably, trade is the engine of history, and the acceleration in what you mightcall '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 for the rest of the world, and therefore the key link between the west and the middle east in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. much academic attention has been given to the east india Company, but less well known is the Levant Company, which had the exclusive right to trade with the Ottoman empire from 1581 to 1825. The Levant Company exported British manufacturing, colonial goods and raw materials, and imported silk, cotton, spices, currants and other Levantine goods. it set up 'factories' (trading establishments) across Ottoman lands and hired consuls, company employees and agents from among its members, as well as foreign tradesmen and locals. here, despina vlami outlines the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Levant Company, and traces the company's last glimpses of prosperity combined with slump periods and tension, as both the Ottoman and the British empire faced significant change and war. she points out that the growth of 'free' trade and the end of protectionism coincided with modernisation and reforms, and while doing so, provides a new lens through which to view the decline of the Ottoman world.

Aleppo and its Hinterland in the Ottoman Period comprises eleven essays in English and French by leading scholars of Ottoman Syria which draw on new research in Turkish, Levantine and other archival sources. Focusing on both the city and its place in the wider region, the collection examines trade guilds and Christian settlement in Aleppo, Turkmen and Bedouin tribes in Aleppo’s interior, international trade and the establishment of an Ottoman commercial tribunal in the Tanzimat period, Aleppo and the rise of the millet system, the Belgian consular presence, Sufi networks in the province of Aleppo, the countryside of Antioch under the Egyptian occupation, and the urban revolt of 1850. With contributions from Enver Çakar, Elyse Semerdjian, Charles Wilkins, Stefan Winter, Mary Momdjian, Bruce Masters, Sylvain Cornac, Mafalda Ade, Feras Krimsti, Nicolas Jodoin, Stefan Knost.

This multi-disciplinary volume reflects the wealth of recent scholarship devoted to early modern Istanbul. It embraces manifold perspectives on the city through new subjects and questions, while offering fresh approaches to older debates, crisscrossing the socioeconomic, political, cultural, environmental, and spatial.