It is interesting to trace the changes which have occurred in the historical importance of the Mediterranean. As long as that sea remained the great highway between nations, the commercial republics were content to extend this highway towards the east, by establishing caravan routes to the Gulf of Persia, to India, and to China. In the Middle Ages Genoese factories dotted the coasts of the Black Sea, and extended thence through Trans-Caucasia as far as the Caspian. European travellers, and particularly Italians, at that time crossed Western Asia in all directions; and many a route hardly known in our days was then frequented almost daily. But for several centuries direct commercial intercourse with Central Asia has dwindled down to small proportions.
The Mediterranean had ceased to be a great ocean highway. Our navigators, no longer dreading a boundless sea, took their ships into every part of the ocean. The difficult and perilous land routes were abandoned, the once busy markets of Central Asia became solitudes, and the Mediterranean itself a veritable blind alley, as far as the world’s commerce was concerned. This condition of affairs lasted for many years, but since the middle of this century our relations with the East have {33} been renewed, and the lost ground is rapidly being recovered. Within the last year a great commercial revolution has been effected through the opening of one of the ancient gates of the Mediterranean, and the Suez Canal has become the great highway of steamers between Western Europe, the Indies, and Australia. Possibly, at no distant future, a similar canal will enable our merchantmen to proceed from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and perhaps even to the Amu and the Syr, in the very heart of the ancient continent.
It is thus that the great centres of intercommunication, or vital points of our planet, as we should like to call them, become shifted in the course of time. Port Said, an improvised town on a desert shore, has thus become a centre of attraction for travellers and merchandise, whilst the neighbouring cities of Tyre and Sidon have dwindled down into miserable villages, with nothing to indicate the proud position they held in the past. Carthage, too, has perished, and Venice decayed. Many a thriving place on the shores of the Mediterranean has been reduced to insignificance through the silting up of its harbour, the employment of larger vessels, the loss of independence, or through political changes of all kinds. But in nearly every instance some neighbouring town has taken the place of these decayed harbours, and most of the great routes of commerce have maintained their original directions, and their terminal points, as well as intermediate stations, have remained in the same localities.
There are, moreover, certain places which ships are almost obliged to frequent, and where towns of importance arise as a matter of course. Such are the Straits of Gibraltar and of Messina; such, also, are places like Genoa, Trieste, and Saloniki, which occupy the bottom of gulfs or bays penetrating far into the land. Ports offering the greatest facilities for embarking merchandise intended for foreign countries, such as Marseilles and Alexandria, are likewise natural centres of attraction to merchants. One town there is in the Mediterranean which enjoys at one and the same time every one of the geographical advantages which we have pointed out, for it is situated on a strait connecting two seas and separating two continents. This town is Constantinople, and despite the deplorable maladministration under which it suffers, its position alone has enabled it to maintain its place amongst the great cities of the world.
The ports of the Mediterranean no longer enjoy a monopoly of commerce as they did for thousands of years, but the number of ships to be met with in that inland sea is, nevertheless, proportionately far greater than what we meet with on the open oceans. The commercial marine of the Mediterranean numbers thirty-seven thousand vessels, of a capacity of two million seven hundred and ninety-six thousand tons, without counting fishing-boats. This is more than one-fourth of the entire commercial marine of the world, as respects the number of ships, and one-sixth of it as regards tonnage. This inferiority of tonnage is due to the small vessels of ancient types which still maintain their ground in Greece and Italy, and which possess certain advantages for the coasting trade.
To this marine of the Mediterranean should be added the vessels belonging to foreign ports, which visit it for purposes of trade, and amongst which those of {34} England take the most prominent rank. The Government of Great Britain has even taken care to secure itself a place amongst the Mediterranean powers. It has occupied Gibraltar, at the eastern entrance to this basin, and taken possession of Malta, which commands its centre; and although the western entrance, formed by the Suez Canal, is not in its possession, its garrisons on Perim and the rock of Aden are able at any moment to close up the only approach to it which leads from the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea.
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Fig. 8.—STEAMER ROUTES AND TELEGRAPHS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN.
Scale 1 : 45,000,000.
