The East India Company, On The Other Hand, Alleged That The Cloth They
Exported Was Finer And More Valuable Than
That exported by the Turkey
Company, and that, if they were rightly informed, the medium of cloths
exported by that
Company, for the last three years, was only 19,000 cloths
yearly: it is admitted, however, that before there was any trade to China
and Japan, the Turkey Company's exportation of cloth did much exceed that
of the East India Company. With respect to the charge of exporting bullion,
it was alleged that the Turkey Company also export it to purchase the raw
silk in Turkey. The East India Company further contended, that since their
importation of raw silk, the English silk manufacturers had much encreased,
and that the plain wrought silks from India were the strongest, most
durable, and cheapest of any, and were generally re-exported from England
to foreign parts.
We have been thus particular in detailing this dispute between these
companies, partly because it points out the state of the Levant Company and
their commerce, at the close of the seventeenth century, but principally
because it unfolds one of the principal causes of their decline; for,
though some little notice of it will afterwards occur, yet its efforts were
feeble, and its success diminished, chiefly by the rivalry of the East
India Company.
The Levant trade, as we have seen, was gradually obtained by the English
from the hands of the Venetians and other foreign powers.
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