Levant Company

The Levant Company was an English chartered trading company formed on September 11, 1592 when Queen Elizabeth I approved the merger of the earlier Venice Company and Turkey Company. It traded English textiles, tin, pewter and other goods for raw silk, cotton, currants, spices and leather from the eastern Mediterranean, operating through major trading posts at Aleppo, Constantinople, Smyrna and Alexandria across the Ottoman Empire, and at its height employed roughly 6,000 people and operated twenty to twenty-five armed vessels for protection. The British government assumed control of its functions in 1821, and the company was formally dissolved by the Dissolution of Levant Company Act on May 19, 1825, with its consular duties passing to the Board of Trade.