The Growth of European Enterprise	65
plan to divert the Upper Nile into the Red Sea and so deprive
Egypt of her vital water-supply.
In the Persian Gulf the Portuguese had occupied by 1515 the
strategic and trading posts of Muscat, Hormuz, and Bahrain; but
they were never able to seize permanent bases in the Red Sea,
since the opposition of the Mamluk and subsequently the Otto-
man navies held them in check. Though they enjoyed for the
moment a monopoly of the Cape Route, they had by no means
diverted all the traffic from the Overland Route. Throughout the
sixteenth century Arab traders were still bringing the silks, spices,
dyes and drugs of the East and the coffee of the Yemen up the Red
Sea and across the desert to Cairo and Alexandria, and trade also
continued to follow the route from the Persian Gulf via the Syrian
steppe to the Levant ports. Caravans of four to six hundred camels
were common, and Aleppo became the leading trading-centre of
Syria; there are several references to the city in Shakespeare. la
1521 Venice obtained from the Sultan a commercial concession of
the form which was to become common, granting her traders
freedom from customs-duties or other taxation beyond a stated
limit, and judicial extraterritoriality under the authority of their
own consuls. These were the so-called Capitulations (i.e. the
'chapters' of the concession) modelled on precedents of the
Crusader and Mamluk periods.1 Commercial pre-eminence in the
Mediterranean was now, however, passing from Venice to France,
to whom capitulations were granted in 1536. By the time Eliza-
bethan England entered upon the Levantine commercial scene,
founding in 1581 the Levant Company of Merchants to trade her
good woollen cloth and tin for eastern products, the French were
already well established; and though they could not prevent the
English from opening a consulate in Aleppo, they did successfully
obstruct the opening of an English consulate at Alexandria. In any
case, the stout English woollens found little sale in torrid Egypt.
Already before the accession of Queen Elizabeth the English had
begun to chafe at the Portuguese monopoly of the Far. Eastern
trade. The population was increasing. The manufacture of woollen
cloth was outstripping the demands of the home market; but not
yet feeling strong enough to challenge the Portuguese by attempt-
1 They were destined to survive down to the twentieth century and make
difficulties for diplomats and administrators in the altered conditions of the
Middle East.