ABSTRACT
Over the last century the foundations, development and ideological justifications of English mercantile and diplomatic contacts with the Ottoman Turks in the reign of Elizabeth and later have been the subject of a number of scholarly studies, while the English "image of the Turk" during the Elizabethan and Jacobean Renaissance has been explored by both literary critics and historians. 1 Despite their variant approaches, both economic historians and literary and cultural scholars have tended to downplay evidence of earlier English contacts with the Ottomans in order to stress the novelty and scope of those occurring after 1570. They usually relate that during the reign of Elizabeth I changing economic and political conditions in the Low Countries and Mediterranean, coupled with royal support for the tentative contacts undertaken by London merchants with the Porte, laid the foundations for a regular and substantial commerce between England and the Levant. Some years later, in the 1580s, the English government's search for allies against the Spanish led it to retain a permanent ambassador in Constantinople, and even to make moves towards an alliance. 2
