In 1595, London’s Levant Company was doing very nicely. Three years earlier,
Queen Elizabeth I had granted its members exclusive rights to trade in a region
that stretched from Venice to Constantinople and around the eastern
Mediterranean to Syria and Lebanon. From there they imported fine silks, richly
patterned carpets and exotic spices. Relations with the Ottoman Empire were good
and the Sultan had awarded the English valuable trade concessions.
But now the Ottoman ruler was dead, and there were no guarantees that his
successor Mehmet III would be so obliging. In London, the company’s directors
argued about how to…
