British Trade and the Rise of Beirut, 1830–1860

Abstract

In Turkey, foreign trade now confines its principal operations to the cities of Constantinople, Smyrna, and Alexandria … Aleppo, which was before the Middle of the last century the most considerable emporium in Turkey, is now a place of comparatively little commercial importance. The trade began to decline shortly after the above mentioned period, and in the year 1792 the Levant Company finally dissolved the respectable Establishment which they had previously supported there, the Consul in fact being then the only English resident in the city, whereas in former times there had been as many as twenty-eight British merchants attached to that factory. The towns in Syria have been of late supplied with British manufactures from the establishments at Alexandria, but the consumption dose not appear to have been sufficiently extensive to encourage any of the trading houses in that city to form branch establishments on the Syrian coasts.