Читать книгу Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant - John Covel - Страница 10

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From the life of Dudley North, afterwards Sir Dudley, son of Lord North, and ambassador for the Company to the Porte, which life was written by his son, we get an interesting insight into the life and times of those Merchant Adventurers in the seventeenth century, who were undoubtedly the founders of our national fortunes and national pre-eminence.

Dudley North was born in 1641, and went out to Smyrna as supercargo, and was apprenticed to a Turkey merchant when eighteen years of age, with a capital of £400. For many years he lived a most frugal life, making himself master of the Turkish language, and keeping himself aloof from the extravagant and luxurious lives which the English merchants in the Smyrniote factories lived in those days. When they “procured a pack of hounds, and hunted in the country, after the English way”, young North resisted the temptation to buy a horse, and went out hunting on an ass. He was a young man sure of eventual success. On his subsequent removal to Constantinople, and employment in the factory of Messrs. Hedges and Palmer, he lived in the building itself, and looked after the bookkeeping, and gained his first credit by getting in the outstanding debts of the firm. He made himself master of the “rules of Turkish justice”, and at once set about to institute five hundred claims in the law courts. These claims he conducted himself in the Turkish Courts in the Turkish language, and won a great many of those which his employers had hitherto looked upon as hopeless.

He soon set up business on his own account, and as it rapidly increased, he sent for his brother Montagu, from Aleppo, and together the brothers built up for themselves the fabric of a colossal fortune.

The brothers North appear to have dealt largely in jewels, with which they tempted the women of the Seraglio, and to have lent money at from 20 to 30 per cent. to impecunious Pashas. Dudley North became treasurer of the Levant Company in Constantinople, did excellent work in the survey of the city, and eventually concluded his successful career by being appointed ambassador for the Company to the Porte. He was a man of strong business capacity, and “his first care”, says his son, “on setting up for himself, was to get a fire-tight room to secure his goods from fire, and a sofa-room in which to entertain the Turks.”

About this time we hear ever more and more, in the Levant Company’s dealings with the Turks, of the avanias, or unauthorised demands made by the Turks on foreign merchants. Sir Dudley North at once took up this question, and wrote himself an interesting account of these encroachments on the capitulations granted to the Turkey merchants. The avanias had their origin in small matters of etiquette; gradually they spread to commerce and merchandise, and in 1685 came the great edict, which obliged every foreigner who had married a Turkish subject, himself to become a subject of the Porte, and these men were forbidden to leave the country without the Sultan’s consent.

This edict has given rise to the still numerous Levantine families to be found in the Turkish Empire, families bearing English, French, and Italian names, and tracing their origin to those nations, but practically absorbed in the Ottoman Empire. It was a great blow to many artisans and merchants who had married and settled in the Levant. No less than forty French watchmakers, who had married Greek wives and settled in Galata, were obliged to become Turkish subjects in spite of the remonstrances of the French ambassador, and the case of Mr. Pentloe settled the question with regard to the English. He had married a Greek lady, and on his death left a will appointing two English merchants as his executors, obliging them to realise his property, and send his widow and her two children to England. Accordingly, the executors proceeded to carry out his wishes, but the Turkish Government seized Mrs. Pentloe and her children on embarkation, and threw the two executors into prison, from which they did not emerge for some considerable period; all Mr. Pentloe’s money was confiscated, and our ambassador could get no redress. This iniquitous avania was not repealed for a hundred years afterwards, and may be taken as the origin of most of the so-called Levantine families, great numbers of which are to be found in Constantinople, Smyrna, Salonika, and other trade centres in the Turkish Empire.

The progress of the Levant Company was steady, and prosperity attended their commerce. Notwithstanding, in 1681 we find the Turkey merchants petitioning Parliament against the East India Company, and begging for permission to have “exercise of trade in the Red Sea, and all other dominions of the Grand Signior, and to forbid the East India Company to import raw or wrought silks”; and further stating that as their freights were “raw silks, gaules, grograms, yarn, cotton, etc., and as they, not being a joint-stock Company, did not export much gold”, that the East India Company ought to be restricted from importing such things as they considered they only had the monopoly of. To this petition the East India Company drew up an exhaustive reply, and Parliament set the petition on one side.

For the first three decades of the last century the prosperity of the Levant Company may be said to have been at its height. In the years 1716 and 1717 they exported to Turkey “43,000 cloths, and a very great quantity of lead, tin, sugar, etc.” In 1718, for the greater protection of merchants, “general ships”, which sailed together in large squadrons, were appointed, and the manufacturers had nothing to do but to convey their goods to the wharves, consign them to the shipowners, and pay the freight. These general ships, as they were called, used to leave England about July 1st, so as to have good weather in the open seas, and reach Turkey about the right time for the winter markets; then they returned home with raw silks, mohair, and other products of the East.

For some cause or another, in 1753 the condition of the Levant Company was not so satisfactory. In this year they sent a petition to Parliament for the remodelling of their charter on more favourable conditions. In this petition they stated that a quarrel between Sir Kenelm Digby and the Venetian admiral in the Bay of Scanderoon had cost the Company £20,000; that the indiscretion of a young man at Aleppo had imperilled the lives of all Europeans, and incurred enormous losses on the Company; that they had to pay an indemnity of £12,000 for prisoners taken in war, and other similar misfortunes had fallen upon them. Consequently, Parliament thought fit to grant them their petition: they were to have unmolested choice of the ministers maintained by them at home and abroad, ambassadors, governors, deputies, consuls, etc.; nobody except free brothers of the corporation could send ships into those parts, and very stringent rules were made on this point, full powers being given to the Company to fine, imprison, and send home in custody any individuals who infringed this rule; they were allowed to make their own laws and by-laws, though these had to receive the sanction of the Board of Trade; and, with various little assistances from Government in minor points, the Company of Levant Merchants again became exceedingly flourishing, and continued to be so until the end of its days.

At the end of the last century it would appear that the Company consisted of eight hundred members, each and all calling themselves “Turkey Merchants”. The wages of their officials, that is to say, the ambassador, secretaries, chaplains, consuls, and physicians at Constantinople, Smyrna, Aleppo, Alexandria, Algiers, Patras, etc., came to £15,000 per annum. Many of our consulates in the East, as they now stand, were built by them, and the fine embassy at Constantinople cost the Company £10,000. The Porte gave the ground for this building out of gratitude to England for driving the French out of Egypt, and the opening of it was hallowed by the liberation of many Christian slaves, mostly Maltese, who came in a body to the ambassador to tender their heartfelt thanks.[4]

In 1803 it was that the British Government first assumed the appointment and payment of the ambassador and his secretaries; this was the first step towards the disestablishment of the Company. The Eastern Question was then beginning to make itself felt, the Balkan States were in arms against Turkey, and, the interests of trade being naturally subordinate to foreign policy, the Levant Company had to give way.

In 1825, when the disintegration of the Turkish Empire appeared imminent, the Levant Company came to an end. Mr. Canning’s communication to them ran as follows: “It results solely from considerations of public expediency, and in no degree from any disrespect, or disposition to impute any blame to their past administration.” The fact was obvious: the new order of things had to supersede the old; the political atmosphere was full of ideas of free trade; and the aristocratic, exclusive Company of Turkey Merchants had to give way, and they did so gracefully. The deed of surrender was drawn up in 1825, “of all the several grants, privileges, liberties, powers, jurisdictions, and immunities granted and conferred by their charters”; and in solemn conclave the Company of merchants dissolved themselves, after honourably providing pensions for their officials, and handing over a substantial balance to the treasury.

During its life of 244 years the Levant Company had had a most exemplary and noble career, beneficial not only to its members, but to the English nation, building up for her her commerce, and making her name respected in the East. It would take a volume to enumerate the deeds of their great men, and how they have not only contributed to our commercial success, but have embellished our literature with admirable studies both of the past and of the present. Sir Paul Ricaut and Sir James Porter wrote admirable works on the policy and government of the Turkish people. Montague, Covel, and Pococke gave some of the earliest accounts of the people of the East in our tongue.

Under the influence of the Company, considerable attention was paid to archæology: Spon and Wheeler, Chishull, Shaw, and last, but not least, Lord Elgin, who rescued the marbles of the Parthenon from being damaged in the bombardment of 1827. The Company’s doctors used to make a special study of the plague. Russell on the Plague was quite the standard work of its time, and Dr. Maclean also made a special study of that dread disease; and to the efforts of these men we may almost say that we owe the gradual diminution and eventual eradication of the malady.

The rescuing of slaves from corsairs, the liberation of oppressed Christians, whether they happened to be English, Greeks, or Armenians, will be for ever one of the noblest and proudest of our actions. Without the influence of the Levant Company, Greece would probably have never succeeded in establishing her independence, and the Mussulmans would have effectually eradicated the Christian populations of the East; and it is a question for grave thought, as to whether our free and enlightened Government, during the half-century that it has had control over our actions in the East, has been as active and as influential as the Company of Turkey Merchants, who could draw the sword as well as the purse-strings, and were not hampered by the parsimonious feelings of those who have to draw up an economical budget to present to the people whose goodwill they wish to retain.