The India Office Records as a Source for the Economic History of the Middle East

British involvement in the Middle East had two main points of origin. ¹ The first was in Europe. Commercial relations in the area of the Eastern Mediterranean, which, from the sixteenth century, were grouped under the control of the Levant Company, led to the establishment of a number of agencies in that area. ² The most important of these, of course, was at Istanbul, as the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Here the agent had a dual role as the representative of Company and Crown and his duties were commercial and diplomatic. After the extinction of the Levant Company, its remaining agents were taken over by the Crown. Together, the records of the Levant Company (SP 97, 105, 110) and of the Foreign Office (F.O. 78 and its continuations together with associated files), both of which are kept in the Public Records Office in Chancery Lane, London E.C.1. constitute the major source for British relations with the Ottoman Empire and themselves contain a vast amount of information about the economic history of the area.