ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that an account like Benjamin Albyn's had a very practical application in the author's home country as he used the text to encourage support from a wider public during a legal dispute, to counter legal arguments and, importantly in Albyn's case, to restore his credit and standing in the commercial community. It uses the sections of Albyn's texts that describe his time in Turkey and his comparisons between England and the Ottoman empire as a lens through which it is possible to examine merchants’ attempts at self-fashioning as well as their perceptions of English and Ottoman courts of law. Benjamin Albyn began his career in the Levant as a factor for his father and the latter's partner, John Jolliffe, but all three worked under the larger umbrella of the English Levant Company. The circulation of goods first necessitated the circulation of people, and with them came ideas, customs and law.
