Trade, Skills, and Sympathy: The First Century and a Half of Commerce with the Near East

Abstract

The first American contacts with the Near East resulted from the new nation's need for profitable foreign commerce. Loss of ships to Mediterranean pirates brought the founding of the navy and a war with Tripoli; hopes for the expansion of trade led in 1830 to a commercial treaty with the Ottoman Empire. But these commercial hopes were largely disappointed : over the next hundred years the rela tive importance of the Levant trade diminished; more signifi cant than the export of American products was that of mis sionary benevolence and of modernizing skills. Nevertheless, the commercial and evangelical connection gave rise to a con tinuing, if marginal, public and private interest in the region, as did the American concern for the principles of independence and self-determination. The results were paradoxical, as popular sympathy and the efforts of individuals worked both to uphold the Ottoman Empire against European pressures and to support minorities resistant to Ottoman rule. At times, as during the Greek war for independence, this support of minorities ran against commercial interests; at times, as in the Armenian question, it threatened political involvement; by the mid-twentieth century, with the increased impor tance of oil and the establishment of the State of Israel, both consequences were apparent.