Entrepreneurial forms and processes inside a multiethnic pre-capitalist environment: Greek and British enterprises in the Levant (1740s–1820s)

Abstract

The paper investigates entrepreneurial processes related to Levantine trade between the second half of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It examines entrepreneurial form, information management and entrepreneurial response to opportunity and change in two distinctive cases. The first case concerns the business ventures of an enterprising group of Greek merchants; the second refers to the trade activity of the members of the British Levant Company. The two cases are considered and compared in terms of business organisation, quality and value of commercial information available, and entrepreneurial reaction to opportunity and change. The study compares independent and institutional entrepreneurship and highlights some forms of evasive entrepreneurial action carried out inside the multiethnic, pre-capitalist market economy of the Ottoman Empire. It finally shows how diverse ‘opportunity development processes’ connected, overlapped and crossed, interweaving the texture of this particular entrepreneurial environment.