ABSTRACT
In 1551 the government revalued the currency; the cloth trade was naturally hit hard, but its consequences should not be misread as catastrophic. Trading links had been established over a large portion of the globe, even if the original motives were often politics, piracy or the thirst for adventure as much as commerce. In 1581 Elizabeth incorporated the English merchants there as the Turkey Company. Elizabeth increased her representation abroad to take in the rebel Netherlands and the Turkish empire, but the lack of diplomatic links with many of the major continental powers was a real drawback in commercial negotiations. 'The internal market', suggests W. G. Hoskins, 'was probably at least ten times as large, possibly as much as twenty times' as overseas trade. The importance of foreign trade cannot be measured solely by the amount of capital involved when compared, for example, with agriculture.
