Abstract
This collection of 21 essays had its starting point in the French Iberian Conference, organised at South Brittany University in Lorient. It opens with an excellent introductory chapter by co-editor Guy Saupin, which ably sets out the purpose and key arguments of the volume and sets it firmly in the context of the wider literature, to which the footnote references provide an invaluable guide.
The volume is concerned with four principal topics: the creation of a port, the enlargement of an existing port, the rapid transformation of a small port into a large one and temporary or ephemeral ports. The analysis includes commercial harbours and naval bases, as well as those which combine both civilian and naval functions. It conceptualises Atlantic ports as those which face the Atlantic itself, as well as its contiguous seas: the English Channel, the North Sea and the Caribbean. Its analysis therefore encompasses ports in Europe, Africa and America, both before and after independence. The book is organised into three sections, dealing with the creation of ports in the colonial context, the creation and renewal of ports in an age of economic and military globalisation, and the impact of port development on host cities and port hinterlands.
What are the results? The opening of major maritime trade routes and the expansion of shipping and trade in the Early Modern period under European colonial empires explains the emergence of relatively few ports. Geographical factors played a role at various levels in the emergence of ports, influencing the choice of site for settlement and development, and shaping the evolution of the resulting ports. Colonial rivalries also played a substantial role, as in some cases did illicit trade and piracy. In the modern period, the creation of ports is driven by two main factors: shipments of coal, oil and industrial goods to colonial powers and return shipments of finished goods. Except for the ending of the slave trade, the book has little to say about migration, which is surprising in view of the importance of transoceanic liner services, especially on the Atlantic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and of the rise of the cruise ship and maritime tourism. On the other hand, the book has more to say about the demands of navies for specialised facilities, and the development of large-scale naval bases. Two authors trace the impact of geopolitical developments on the creation of ports, especially in terms of the creation of nuclear submarine bases during the Cold War.
Technological change emerges as a major theme, especially in the modern period, when larger ships and consequently the demand for larger-scale accommodation forced changes to the layout and facilities offered by ports. Thus did a hierarchy emerge based not only on numbers of incoming and outgoing vessels, but also on the ability to attract ships from other ports, on the ability to provide sufficient space, facilities and depth of water to accommodate modern cargo vessels, and on the ability to adopt the new techniques of cargo-handling. This forces ports into a process of permanent adjustment to their infrastructure. In rivers and estuaries, the main challenge is to deepen the water and modify its contours to allow the largest ships to come and go safely and at all states of the tide. Yet this was beyond many well-established ports in the twentieth century, which declined in favour of more accessible sites further downstream.
The creation of ports is driven by three main groups of actors: the state at national, regional and local levels; the investors (merchants and shipowners, chambers of commerce and so on); and those tasked with creating the port, in the form of surveyors, architects, contractors and engineers. Regarding the first group, the book draws a clear distinction between the central state and the actions of local polities, in the case of Anvers highlighting the greater dynamism of local management in the nineteenth century, whilst in the same period it highlights the importance of colonial employers in shaping Dakar as a port. Only late in the nineteenth century does public opinion emerge as a factor shaping their decisions.
The final section deals with the urban impact of ports, which ranged from fully or partly planned settlements to almost entirely spontaneous creations of urban areas on hitherto unsettled sites such as Vera Cruz. In such cases the labour forces who built the port, sometimes in colonial times including slaves, formed their first inhabitants. Yet as they develop a new social structure emerges. In the colonial context, the city-port is initially a fort, allowing the coloniser to establish its imperial defence networks. Yet defensive considerations were equally evident in the development of European ports. Meanwhile, in the growing port, a gradual separation can be detected between city and harbour. The city is incomplete, its development hindered and hemmed in by the waterfront, whilst later the development of facilities further from the urban centre has sometimes created new settlements to accommodate the necessary labour. This requires the mobilisation of materials and manpower and leads to the reconfiguration of the port's overseas connections. The emergence of essentially new ports in this way disrupts port hierarchies, creating large new ports to which established ones large and small become very much secondary parts of wider maritime networks. However, in the case of the outer harbour (such as Saint Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire), these new ports can weaken the position of the established ones further upstream. Bordeaux thus prevents the rise of Le Verdon at the mouth of the Gironde.
One area in which more coverage would have been welcome is the extent to which environmental factors have shaped the choice of sites for ports, the creation of their urban hinterland and the provision of port facilities and other infrastructure. The focus is very much on economic, strategic and navigational factors underlying the development of ports. In the case of Le Havre and Fort Royal de la Martinique the urban centre ends up on the less favourable site, from an environmental point of view, but no chapter examines this. Nevertheless, this is an important collection of works on an ambitious subject, covering a very long period, and as such it deserves to be welcomed.