English Adventurers' Company System

Timeline

1. 1555–1569London–Moscow trade route · MoscowIn 1555 Queen Mary chartered the Muscovy Company to trade via joint-stock venture capital on the North Sea–White Sea route, establishing the legal-financial template for English overseas chartered companies.
2. 1571–1580Atlantic and Pacific sea lanes · global oceansIn the 1570s English adventurers and privateers (such as Drake), with tacit royal approval, challenged Spanish American sea lanes; the 1577–1580 circumnavigation demonstrated the new scale of combining venture capital with armed trade.
3. 1581Aleppo and Smyrna trade routes · Ottoman EmpireIn 1581 Elizabeth I chartered the Levant Company, extending the adventurers' model into the Ottoman Mediterranean and competing with Venetian and French merchants in the re-export trade of silk and spices.
4. 1579–1584Baltic Sea · Baltic SeaIn 1579 the Eastland Company received a charter to trade in Baltic timber and tar; by the late 1570s the adventurers' system was expanding on two fronts, in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.