LEVANT COMPANY.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Case of the Governor and Company of Merchants of England, trading to the Levant Seas [drop-head title]. First edition of the Levant Company's defence of their exclusive charter to trade English cloth directly with the Middle East. The Levant Company was established in 1582, but by the middle decades of the 18th century its position was no longer assured, and competition from French interests was driving down exports of English cloth. The decline hit the cloth manufacturers of the West Country particularly fiercely, and it was their politicians who championed a bill in the House of Commons to undermine the Company's effective monopoly on Middle Eastern trade.This pamphlet aims to set the record straight on several points, contending that the Company's charter "cannot be said to establish a Monopoly or exclusive Trade; already the Company is open to all manner of Persons not below the Degree of mere Merchants" (p. [1]).A second edition of the pamphlet was circulated in the early 1750s, in response to a further attack on the company: that edition reset the text to cover only 3 pages.

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