Map of the Railways of the Ottoman Empire and the Chief Mining Concerns under Foreign Control before the War.

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As the building of this system of railways closely concerned the French companies of the Smyrna-Kassaba and Beyrut-Damascus railways and the English company of the Smyrna-Aidin railway, the French companies and the Ottoman Imperial Bank concluded arrangements with the holders of the concessions to safeguard French interests as much as possible. Thus a French financial group took up a good many of the Baghdad bonds (22,500 and 21,155 bonds) and numerous shares of the “Société de construction du chemin de fer” established in 1909. On the whole, the share of the French consortium before the war amounted to 4,000,000 francs on the one hand, and 1,950,000 francs on the other; the share of the German consortium was 11,000,000 and 8,050,000 francs.

The concessions controlled by English capital were the Smyrna-Aidin line, 380 miles long, with a capital of 114,693,675 francs, and the Smyrna-Kassaba line, which was ceded later on to the company controlled by French capital which has already been mentioned. They were the first two railway concessions given in Turkey (1856 and 1863).

In Constantinople the port, the lighthouses, the gasworks, the waterworks, and the tramways were planned and built by French capital and labour.

The port of Smyrna, whose concession was given in 1867 to an English company and two years after passed into the hands of some Marseilles contractors, was completed by the “Société des quais de Smyrne,” a French limited company. The diversion of the Ghedis into the Gulf of Phocea in order to prevent the port being blocked up with sand was the work of a French engineer, Rivet.

The Bay of Beyrut has also been equipped by a French company founded in 1888 under the patronage of the Ottoman Bank by a group of the chief French shareholders of the Beyrut-Damascus road and other French financial companies.