Enterpreneurship and relational capital in a levantine context: Bartholomew Edward Abbott, the "father of the levant company" in Thessaloniki (eighteenth-nineteenth centuries)

Abstract

The paper explores the entrepreneurial strategy and tactics of a British merchant who traded in the port of Thessaloniki from the late eighteenth century to the first decades of the nineteenth. Bartholomew Edward Abbott was a Levant Company's Freeman who was also involved in the Company's internal affairs as an appointed interim Consul at the Company's factory in Thessaloniki. Abbott's strategy intertwined with his family life and relatives and with his rights, duties and commitments as a Freeman. The origin and performance of his relational capital - comprising family, kin, Freemen and local businessmen - shows how his activity was sustained by overlapping and, at times, opposing identities. His case allows us to get another glimpse inside a great chartered trade company and examine, even briefly, its operation and corporate identity. It also allows us to get an idea of the barriers distinguishing the activity of a Freeman from that of an independent entrepreneur, the aspirations of a merchant from those of an officeholder of the Company.