"After independence in 1830, the new Belgian State immediately realised the importance of the Ottoman Empire in international affairs, politically and economically... As early as the 1860s Belgium had become one of the world’s leading industrial nations, heavily relying on sales abroad because of its limited domestic market. Developing the Ottoman industrial economy was a shared interest of boththe Ottomans themselves and industrial European countries like Belgium. It is unsurprising therefore, that around 1870, an engineer in mechanics from Liège, Count Zboinski, came all the way to Constantinople to produce Asia Minor’s very first geological map for coal extraction. In particular from the 1880s onwards, interests seemed to match outstandingly between the Ottoman drive to modernise infrastructure and Belgium’s globally renowned expertise in railway building, tramways, transport equipment in general, electricity grids and other types of public utilities. The Legation committed itself to make these opportunities for trade and investment more widely known in Belgian business circles. In October 1894, for instance, the “Recueil Consulaire” published a very substantial 200 page report from the Legation’s dragoman Marghetich, on financial and commercial perspectives in the Ottoman railway sector.
The director of Cockerill [1], Adolphe Greiner himself travelled on the Orient Express to Constantinople in May 1890, hoping to carry off the Ottoman concession to construct the Samsun-Sivas railway. A Member of Parliament from Huy, and at the same time Board Member at Cockerill, Ferdinand Baron de Macar, threw his weight behind Greiner’s negotiations and also came to lobby in Constantinople, in September of the same year. The efforts of Greiner and Macar proved successful, in spite of tough German and French competition, as in the course of 1891 the Porte conferred to Cockerill the railway concession not only between Samsun and Sivas, but over a much longer stretch, down to Alexandrette (Iskenderun), linking thus the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The project was grand, but unfortunately never got beyond the drawing board. In the end, Belgian industry had to be content with only the concession for a mere 42 km railway between Mudanya and Bursa, granted to Georges Naegelmackers, a banker from Liège, also in 1891. The hunt for Ottoman railway concessions in the 1890s and its intricate political intrigues, proved to be well beyond the leverage power of Belgian companies, in the face of overwhelming French and German strategic jockeying."
Belgium in the Ottoman Capital, From the Early Steps to 'la Belle Epoque' part 1
See Also: part 2
Rails from Haifa line manufactured by the Cockerill Foundry in 1903.NOTES
[1] William Cockerill (1759–1832) was a British entrepreneur who settled in France. By using some of British industrial inventions (not covered by patents in France), he built one of the greatest companies in Europe dealing in textiles, steam engines, iron, mining, cannons, bridge materials, locomotives, and more.
He was a Lancashire man who settled in Verviers in 1799. Innovations by Cockerill (and others) made Verviers a leader in the mechanisation of woollen textiles production. Thus Verviers became a city made by the Industrial Revolution. In 1807, Cockerill founded a textile factory near Liège (today's Belgium). At that time, due to the Napoleonic blockade, Europe was deprived of British industrial products. To expand his textile machines, Cockerill moved into iron-making to monopolise this branch of industry. Around 1817, the Cockerill and his sons had built the largest iron-foundry and machine manufactory in Europe at Seraing. William's son John Cockerill (1790–1840) was a leading European iron founder. In 1835, the Cockerills’ works made the rails for the Europe's first continental railway, as well as its locomotive, La Belge. For Cockerill's efforts, Belgium became the second industrialised country in Europe (after Britain).
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