Levant Company

The Levant Company was one of the interests involved in England’s parliamentary contests over imported textiles and domestic manufacturing. After losing its trading monopoly, it joined forces with wool producers and London and Canterbury silk weavers to restrict Asian textiles. The episode illustrates how competing commercial groups used petitions and political access to shape policy—and how the resulting coalition could be challenged by newer industries.

Commercial interests after 1688

The Levant Company’s place in the conflict followed a broader shift in England’s trade politics after 1688. Before then, the East India Company had held a government-sanctioned monopoly over Asian trade, sustained in part through bribes to James II. Following the political changes of 1688, it came under attack from traders seeking competition; a new East India Company was founded to compete with it. The Levant Company, although it had recently lost its own monopoly, had a distinct interest in the consequences: it wanted to exclude Asian silks and preserve room in the market for silks from the Ottoman Empire.

The coalition against Asian textiles

Between 1696 and 1698, wool manufacturers from East Anglia and the West Country joined with silk weavers from London and Canterbury and the Levant Company. Their shared campaign sought restrictions not only on wearing Asian cottons and silks but also on dyeing and printing Asian textiles in England. The alliance joined interests that were not identical: wool producers faced competition from inexpensive Indian cloth, while Levant Company silk importers sought a protected niche for Ottoman silks.

Parliament acted in 1701, passing an act intended to encourage domestic manufactures and employment. From September that year, specified silks and mixed fabrics from Persia, China, and the East Indies, along with painted, dyed, printed, or stained calicoes imported from those regions, could not be worn in England. The measure advanced the coalition’s campaign, though it did not initially stop all Asian textile imports: goods could still be brought in for re-export, plain calicoes could be imported and finished in England, and muslins were exempt.

Limits of protection and political competition

Domestic wool manufacturers regarded these exceptions as loopholes. Their campaign culminated in the Calico Act of 1721, which prohibited the use or wearing in Great Britain of printed, painted, stained, or dyed calico after December 25, 1722. Although this removed Asian competition for English woolens, it did not eliminate competition from domestic cotton and linen producers. Cotton and linen were combined to make fustian, a popular cloth, and the wool industry then sought to restrict linen, much of which was produced in Scotland and Ireland.

That next effort encountered opposition from fustian producers in the growing industrial centers of Manchester, Lancaster, and Liverpool. The Levant Company is not identified as a participant in this later dispute; rather, the episode shows the limits of the earlier coalition’s success. Petitions from both sides carried their competing demands into Parliament, where the newer interests prevailed over those of the wool industry. The account thus traces a shift from joint efforts to restrict Asian imports toward conflict among domestic industries, with political participation enabling different commercial groups to contest the rules.