The port of Eminönü developed in the 19th century as a modern landmark in the centre of Istanbul, where both ancient and modern buildings – mosques, palaces and Sirkeci station for the Orient Express – were located.

In spite of the introduction of steamships and innovations in seafaring, traditional ships and seafaring did not disappear, both representing a main source of income. The dhow is a traditional wooden ship of Qatar and the Gulf, which was used for pearling, fishing and for trade with India and East Africa.

Galati (Moldavia) was a port on the Danube waterway strategically and economically organised at the international level. The only port not controlled by the Sublime Porte or Russia, Galati traded with Poland, Hungary and the Ottoman market. A free port between 1837 and 1883, it was the seat of the Commission of the Danube at the end of the Crimean War.

The modernisation of seafaring in the Mediterranean was on the political and economic agenda of the Austrian Empire. After the Congress of Vienna (1815) Venice was incorporated in the Kingdom of Lombardo-Venezia. Austria considered Venice to be the gateway to the Middle East and introduced a railway to connect the port of Venice to the core of the empire.

The modernisation of seafaring went side by side with the construction of railways to improve the efficiency of trade between ports and significant locations. The first railway on Romanian territory and in the European part of the Ottoman Empire, the Constanţa–Cernavodă railway was built after the Crimean War in a strategic position from the Black Sea towards the Danubian waterways.

The port of La Goulette was restored by Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey as part of his programme of reforms to reinforce the economy, administration and military power of the Regency of Tunis. The aim was to make the port of Tunis a modern port for ships of big tonnage, connected to railways and other infrastructure.

Seafaring and economy were deeply interconnected. Having lost Venice in 1866, Trieste (today an Italian city) became the main port through which Austria conducted commercial relations with Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. The Suez Canal was a further commercial outlet for the Austrian market.

Beirut port was renovated from 1887. The Ottoman authority gave the concession of the port to an Ottoman company, the Compagnie du Port, des Quais et des Entrepôts de Beyrouth. The concession was fortified when the company gained from the Customs authority the sole rights to store and carry all the transit goods passing through Customs.

In 1904 Sultan Mulay ‘Abd al-Aziz signed a contract with the Compagnie Marocaine, a French company connected to the Schneider industrial group, to develop the port. This happened in a context of delicate balance between the competing European powers to secure influence in Morocco through projects, economic activities or financial assistance.

The railway connected the port to the main Beirut station. It was conceived as a continuation of the sea route via Beirut port. It testifies to how the new communication routes opened new ways inland, and to the link between local infrastructure and economic changes in the Ottoman provinces.

Messageries Maritimes was a French merchant shipping company whose story throughout the 19th century was influenced by social, military and political events. Its ships were used during the Crimean War for travel and for trade in the Middle East and on the Atlantic Ocean. It is usually associated with the period of France’s colonial and military interventionism in the Middle East and Asia.

This map, published by a French maritime company, shows the railways connected to the ports of Tunis and Algiers. At the beginning of the 20th century, railways and ports were efficiently organised in order to allow the maritime companies to bring back to France the minerals extracted in Tunisia and Algeria.

This painting shows the port of Algiers as a French colony. No longer the capital of corsairs, Algiers was reshaped by an infrastructure to match the economic strategies of the colonisers. The industrial port, like many other similar structures, adjusted its traditional landscape to meet the needs of the motherland.

The ancient port of Alexandria is an example of the continuous development, in the 19th and early 20th century, of traditional ports to meet the needs of industrialisation. The ports, traditionally located in strategic locations, kept and improved through innovation their role as important hubs on communication routes.