Overcoming the Iron Gates: Austrian Transport and River Regulation on the Lower Danube, 1830s–1840s

In: Central European history, Band 49, Heft 2, S. 162-180

Abstract

AbstractThis article deals with early efforts to facilitate steam navigation between Vienna and Constantinople along the Danube. In addition to analyzing the complex negotiation processes that enabled the first regulation project at the so-called Iron Gates, a narrow gorge situated at the Austrian-Ottoman border, it assesses ways in which the new shipping connection transformed the cultural and spatial perceptions of travelers. The article argues that even though the plan for making the Iron Gates navigable was set out on the drawing boards of engineers and in the cabinets in Pest and Vienna, local circumstances changed its practical implementation in a number of important ways. The success of this major engineering operation relied on close cooperation among hydrological experts, state representatives, and entrepreneurs, all of whom had different stakes in the project but still shared a common interest. Establishing a shipping connection to the Black Sea along the Danube was thus the result of an alignment of interests among Hungarian, Viennese, and local Ottoman authorities; a careful match between theoretical knowledge and practical engineering work; and, last but not least, the surmounting of a mental separation between "Orient" and "Occident."