In 1842, the steamboats of the Erste Donau-Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft (First Danube Steam Navigation Company, or DDSG) navigated with great difficulty through the cataracts of the Iron Gates, a small defile situated in the immediate proximity of the Austrian-Ottoman border. Charles Vane, the third Marquess of Londonderry, provided a dramatic account of just such a crossing in which the company used barges and flat boats to carry passengers and luggage over the Iron Gates, whose raging water hindered smooth passage: “The bank of the Danube, in the passage to Orsova, were high romantic cliffs, and steep and craggy mountains, tumbled together, flanking the tortuous course of the mighty river; which, in this its region of separation between Austria and Turkey, seems to have taken the singular caprice to entirely changing its hitherto navigable nature.”Footnote 1 The memoir was written eight years after steam navigation had been established for the first time on the Lower Danube. Subsequent travel literature popularized the Iron Gates as one of the wildest spots along the Danube.Footnote 2 Steep walls on both banks significantly narrowed the riverbed, creating a breathtaking view for those who crossed the gorge. The route was made out of eight banks of rocks that produced shallow waters and rapid currents.Footnote 3
This article focuses on early efforts to facilitate steam navigation on the Danube to the Black Sea. Besides analyzing the complex negotiation processes that made possible the first regulation project at the Iron Gates, it assesses how the new shipping connection transformed the cultural and spatial perceptions of many travelers. It is remarkable that there is hardly any literature on this important engineering project, which made the Danube navigable for steamboats beyond the Iron Gates. To a certain extent, the story of human intervention into the natural environment of the Lower Danube iterates similar discourses and practices known from engineering projects conducted on other rivers.Footnote 4 In this respect, the Danube shared a number of similarities with the Rhine in particular, another river that crossed several sovereign states. The fragmentation of state authority had a major impact on the administration of both rivers because decisions had to be negotiated among the riverine states.Footnote 5 But whereas single states were in charge of the river's regulation on the Rhine, even engineering works were either joint projects, or needed at least approval from neighboring states, in the case of the Danube. This particularity made engineering at the Iron Gates more closely intertwined with international politics and thus different from similar projects conducted on other European rivers.
The territorial reconfigurations that followed the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 changed the status of the Lower Danube from a de facto closed Ottoman river to an international traffic artery. The treaty allowed, for the first time, “free” navigation on the Lower Danube, with all ships—irrespective of their flags—enjoying equal rights and being subject to the same obligations.Footnote 6 The Treaty of Adrianople was thus a geopolitical and legal precondition for the regulation of the Iron Gates. At the same time, it provided an important opportunity for Austrian officials and entrepreneurs to expand their economic activity into Ottoman territory. As Miroslav Šedivý has pointed out, Chancellor Klemens von Metternich and other high-ranking Viennese officials invested in the Danube Steam Navigation Company to promote Austrian economic interests on the Lower Danube.Footnote 7 Metternich also took responsibility for removing the physical obstacles at the Iron Gates by negotiating terms with the Porte that allowed Austrian engineers to extend their activities into Ottoman territory. From the perspective of high politics, the story of river regulation on the Lower Danube conveys the flawed impression that “the removal of the natural obstacles, including those at the Iron Gates was possible, not difficult and not expensive.”Footnote 8 That is why this article focuses on the Iron Gates in particular: to demonstrate the complex and conflicting nature of this undertaking. It argues that although plans for making the Lower Danube navigable were hatched on the drawing boards of engineers, as well as in the cabinets of government officials in Vienna and Pest, local circumstances changed their outcome when put into practice.
The in-depth perspective of this local study of the regulation of the Iron Gates allows for a detailed examination of the negotiations and local adaptations that were necessary to bring this project to completion. In so doing, it brings new insights into several debates about Austrian history and the history of technology. The success of this 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 in making the river navigable. The most prominent actors were the Hungarian representatives of the Habsburg Monarchy, such as Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary, and Count Stephan Széchenyi, who acted as state representatives and as private entrepreneurs. The archduke and the count were both shareholders in the DDSG, and Széchenyi was even named Commissioner of the Danube (Königlicher Kommissar für die Donau) in 1833. One could also find among the other shareholders most high-ranking Viennese officials, including Metternich—a fact that underlines a peculiarity of Habsburg industrialization, namely, that it was not primarily urban bourgeoisie but rather noblemen and high-level state officials who spurred it.Footnote 9 As a result, cooperation between the state and private actors was much closer in the Habsburg Monarchy than was the case in other European empires. The regulation of the Iron Gates shows, in short, that the same individuals assumed double functions in the same project. This meant that high-profile investors like Széchenyi and Metternich had to harmonize their official and their entrepreneurial activities. Since the same persons were representing various, often conflicting interests, the potential for disagreements among the parties was especially high. As a result, this article argues, the founding years of the DDSG were marked by numerous conflicts and clashes, and were thus far less successful than the extant literature suggests.Footnote 10
The first such conflict that arose between Hungarian magnates and Chancellor Metternich has significance for historiographical debates about the cohesion of the Habsburg Monarchy in the decades before the compromise of 1867.Footnote 11 Although Viennese and Hungarian interests were, in theory, aligned in this project, the Hungarians (Széchenyi in particular) were looking at the Danube primarily as a way in which to develop Hungary's economic revenues. By contrast, Metternich and his diplomatic corps were primarily concerned about the position of the Habsburg Monarchy in the European Concert, which meant that they wanted to avoid overtly provoking the Ottoman Porte. Széchenyi risked upsetting his relations with the chancellor when he agreed to supervise the engineering works without Metternich's official endorsement. Previous scholarly literature has focused mainly on the rise of national sentiment and on the formation of a distinct cultural Hungarian identity to explain the divergences between Viennese authorities and the Hungarian elite—and less on disagreements concerning different economic priorities.Footnote 12 This article demonstrates the way in which the difference of opinion between Metternich and Széchenyi about how to proceed at the Iron Gates related to an important issue: whether it was Hungarian or Viennese authorities who had control over economic decisions in the Hungarian part of the monarchy.
The regulation project also sparked another conflict: one between the administration of the Iron Gates—which was part of the Austrian Military Border (Militärgrenze) and thus under military rule—and Széchenyi, the civilian commissioner for the Danube. The decision by the latter to bring a group of civilian engineers to this territory to perform regulatory work led to numerous disagreements between the newly arrived civilians and the military professionals who were already there. The daily frictions between these two groups shed light on the process of professionalization of civil engineers in Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy. Paul Vásáserhelyi's breakthrough at the Iron Gates gave his team of civilian engineers the requisite professional prestige necessary to set themselves successfully apart from military experts.Footnote 13 Furthermore, his activities at the Iron Gates also illustrated the interrelated process of knowledge circulation among hydraulic experts across imperial borders, as well as the way in which such knowledge was adapted to the specific requirements of this regulation project. After completing the blasting operations, Vásáserhelyi had to revise his initial engineering plans in order to smooth the strong currents that had been caused by the removal of the stones—a development that demonstrates the extent to which the early days of civil engineering in Hungary involved learning-by-doing.
After the project's completion, a different type of negotiation process occurred when travelers on Austrian steamboats took advantage of this newly created shipping passage. Wendy Bracewell has argued that the cultural background of the travelers determined where the physical demarcation between the “Self” and the “Other,” between the “Occident” and the “Orient,” between “Europe” and “Asia,” was set. In line with their personal predispositions, they situated this boundary somewhere between Central Europe and the Near East. Yet, this transition was often a fluid one in which they added more and more “oriental” features to the scenery they described.Footnote 14 In contrast to these gradual transitions, the passage to the Iron Gates added a physical dimension to Central European “Orientalism”: for many travelers, crossing the gorge literally meant stepping out of the Occident and into the Orient. A regular steamboat connection between Vienna and Constantinople nevertheless altered, at least in part, this perception of the Iron Gates as a clear-cut cultural boundary. The Iron Gates remained an important point of cultural transition, but travelers also started to perceive it as a junction between the long separated Habsburg and Ottoman lands. In other words, the establishment of a shipping connection on the Danube from Vienna to the Black Sea resulted from an alignment of interests among Széchenyi, Metternich, Vásáserhelyi, and local Ottoman authorities at Vidin; from a careful match between theoretical and practical engineering knowledge; and, finally, from the ability to overcome a mental separation between “Orient” and “Occident.”
The Treaty of Adrianople and the Navigation of the Danube
The situation on the Lower Danube changed dramatically after the signing of the Treaty in Adrianople in 1829. Following on the heels of at least four military conflicts between the Russian and Ottoman Empires since the mid-eighteenth century—all of which ended in Russian victory—the treaty secured a status quo that would remain unchanged until the Crimean War of 1853–1856. The treaty also sanctioned further westward expansion of Russian administration of the Balkans. The sovereignty of the Danube Delta was transferred (along with the protectorate of the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia) to the Russian Empire after it had gained control of the mouth of the Danube. An important consequence of this territorial shift was twofold: the Lower Danube ceased to be an inland Ottoman river, and all flags gained access to the Black Sea.Footnote 15
The Treaty of Adrianople also set in motion a series of far-reaching transformations in Serbia and in the Danubian Principalities. Still formally a part of the Ottoman Empire, these territories were granted the right to choose their own ruling council and implement an independent internal administration. The export monopoly with the Ottoman Empire was lifted, which meant that the three territories were free to select their own trading partners; in exchange, they consented to pay a fixed annual tribute to the Porte.Footnote 16 Serbia and the Danubian Principalities subsequently started using the Danube as an outlet for their (mostly agricultural and animal) products. In sum, the resulting shift of power relations on the Lower Danube to the benefit of the Russian Empire meant that Serbia and the Principalities were included in an international trade network that reached across the Danube and spread over the continent.Footnote 17
The new trading opportunities in the three states caught the attention of both entrepreneurs and high-ranking officials from the Austrian Monarchy. The Danube had always been of great economic and strategic importance to the Habsburgs, but their trading activity on the Lower Danube and in the Black Sea had never fully developed. Despite the fact that Habsburg merchants had acquired privileges to navigate the Lower Danube in the eighteenth century, physical impediments in the riverbed and mobility restrictions inside the Ottoman Empire prevented trade on the Danube from thriving.Footnote 18 Immediately after the signing of the 1829 treaty, Baron Ottenfels, the Austrian internuncio in Constantinople, complained about the unfulfilled economic potential of the Danube. Merchants and officials alike nevertheless perceived the new international framework as an opportunity to improve and expand river navigation all the way to the Black Sea.Footnote 19 Two additional developments compelled Metternich to give priority to the Danube: the decreasing importance of the Transylvanian trade routes, and the establishment in 1833 of the German Custom Union (Zollverein), which excluded the Habsburg Monarchy. The latter event in particular marked the beginning of a gradual decline in Austria's economic and political influence on the other German territories. To compensate for this loss, officials and merchants elevated the eastward Danube route as the primary outlet for products coming from the Habsburg Monarchy.Footnote 20
Entrepreneurs also recognized the increased potential of the Danube as a trade waterway. After a previous attempt had failed, two Englishmen, John Andrews and Joseph Pritchard, founded the First Danube Steam Navigation Company in 1829; they subsequently convinced not only important Viennese bankers and Hungarian magnates to buy stocks, but also Prince Metternich, Archduke Joseph, and Crown Prince Ferdinand. In 1831 the company's first steamship, Franz I, navigated the Middle Danube; a regular connection to Constantinople was later established in 1836.Footnote 21 The company's importance to the government was underscored by a Privilegium (privilege act) in 1830 that gave the company the exclusive right to use steamboats on the Danube.Footnote 22 The new international status of the Lower Danube functioned as an incentive for the Austrian government and stockholders of the DDSG to invest in improving navigation conditions beyond the Habsburg territories. In fact, the founding of the company marked the beginning of a public-private cooperation that would change the face of Austrian river navigation. The first report by the DDSG administration pointed out the mutual interest that shareholders and the Austrian government had in improving steam navigation on the Danube.Footnote 23 Another report from the year 1838 revealed a division of tasks between the private company and the government: whereas the former was responsible for organizing the transport of goods and people, the latter was in charge of regulating the river and removing natural obstacles.Footnote 24 In several cases this meant that persons acting in an official capacity were also stakeholders in the company. This close connection to the government enabled the DDSG to establish a monopoly on the transportation of passengers, freight, and postal services over the entire course of the Danube—a monopoly that would last virtually until the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy in 1918.Footnote 25
One important consequence of the Treaty of Adrianople was, therefore, that it laid the groundwork for a connection on the Danube between Vienna and Constantinople. Moreover, the geopolitical transformation of the Lower Danube allowed representatives of the Habsburg Monarchy to improve this centuries-old junction. Cooperation between official and private actors led to the foundation of the DDSG, a company that would revolutionize navigation on the Danube. Yet, as we shall see, the Iron Gates proved to be a great hindrance to this connection, which meant that a series of challenging natural and political impediments had to be overcome first before the Middle and Lower Danube could be joined together.
Negotiating the Passage to the Lower Danube
A shipping connection from Vienna to the Lower Danube had to pass through the gorge at the Iron Gates. The political geography of this location was extremely complicated because it was situated at a juncture where several states and administrative units maintained spheres of influence. The border between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires ran across the Iron Gates near the city of Orsova, which was secured on the Habsburg side by the Wallachian-Illyrian Border regiment.Footnote 26 Downstream on the Ottoman side, the Danube separated the Wallachian territory, on the left bank, from Serbia, on the right. To complicate matters further, Serbian territory ended just a few miles past the Iron Gates where the Ottoman province (pashalic) of Vidin began. This political fragmentation meant that Széchenyi—whom Archduke Joseph had put in charge of the efforts to improve navigation—had to secure acceptance from all the states whose territories abutted the Iron Gates.Footnote 27 This meant that, in order for this project to take shape, he had to initiate multilateral negotiations with all these parties, thus making the regulation of the Iron Gates an act of international cooperation.
Because of his extensive business and personal contacts in Europe, Széchenyi was particularly well suited for this assignment, which required diplomatic skill and a mercantile spirit.Footnote 28 As a Hungarian landowner, Széchenyi had a personal interest in ensuring that Hungarian agricultural products could reach new markets downstream.Footnote 29 In addition, he had maintained an interest in the Lower Danube since his youth, and, in 1830, had led an expedition on a ship built precisely for a voyage on the Danube to the Black Sea.Footnote 30 Lastly, he saw this daunting project as an opportunity to modernize his native land and lead it toward a better future. As one of the most prominent representatives of the “Hungarian age of reform,” he channeled his efforts into projects aimed at combatting the perceived backwardness of his country and at increasing its strategic importance.Footnote 31 To that end, and to regulate the Iron Gates, he employed the latest technology, something that had fascinated him his entire life.Footnote 32 He was nevertheless acutely aware of the difficulty of his task: those obstacles “hindering the course of the mightiest river in Europe, ones that could not be overcome for so many centuries and that have given so many of us food for thought, will not be so easily removed. I consider it a gigantic project (Riesenwerk).”Footnote 33
Széchenyi not only had to navigate the troubled waters of the Danube for this assignment, but also deal with several political conflicts that the project stirred up—beginning with the hostile attitude of the Ottoman authorities. Border patrols stopped his crew of engineers and workers the very moment they tried to cross the border to take initial measurements of the area in July 1833.Footnote 34 In response to this challenge, Szèchenyi employed all his resources and connections to convince the local authorities to let his men work on the Ottoman side of the border.Footnote 35 Austrian diplomats in Constantinople attempted to secure official approval at the same time, but despite promises that Austria would cover all costs, the Porte's response was negative.Footnote 36 A number of religious and strategic concerns made the latter oppose any interventions in the riverbed. For example, Ottoman authorities were afraid to defy God by removing stones that had supposedly lain in the river since the creation of the world. More important, they feared the possibility of a military attack along the Danube.Footnote 37 Facing a potential political defeat, Metternich and his staff of diplomats called on Czar Nicholas I to help defuse Ottoman opposition. The Porte showed the first signs of acquiescence following a series of trilateral negations, and finally gave permission for the construction of hydraulic works in late 1834.Footnote 38
The situation on the ground, as Széchenyi's correspondence and diary reveal, was much more complex. The Porte's ferman permitting construction works across the Austrian border was the most important document Széchenyi and his men needed, but it was not the only approval they sought. As a result of the Treaty of Adrianople, the relationship among the Porte, Serbia, and Wallachia had been changing to the benefit of the last. The stipulations of the treaty were nevertheless so general that it took several years to assess their exact implications. Many practical matters remained unclear: for instance, Széchenyi wrote to Archduke Joseph asking the exact location of the demarcation between Ottoman and Serbian territory, to determine under whose jurisdiction the Iron Gates fell. He had hoped for a more accommodating attitude on the part of the Serbs toward his project, but was well aware that Constantinople was in charge when it came to questions of foreign policy.Footnote 39 Securing the approval of the Wallachian and Serbian princes was a simple formality, by contrast, because they were both interested in intensifying their economic relations with the monarchy.Footnote 40 Széchenyi also had to take into account the fact that the Russian Empire had become a riparian state in 1829, and that the Danubian Principalities were still under its occupation. Metternich addressed the czar about the regulation of the Iron Gates, while Széchenyi wrote to Pavel Kiselyov, the commander of the two principalities, to convince him of the mutual economic benefits of this project.Footnote 41
During these negotiations, Széchenyi was confronted with the new geopolitical realities created by the Treaty of Adrianople. He acknowledged the improved international status of Serbia and the Danubian Principalities, which had reinforced their partial autonomy from the Porte. Yet, from the standpoint of international relations, the three political entities were not entitled to pursue policies different from those embraced by the Ottoman government. Széchenyi thus realized that he had to focus on the Ottoman authorities in order to secure approval. A key figure in these multilayered negotiations was consequently the Hussein Pasha of Vidin, the local governor under whose jurisdiction the Iron Gates fell. Obtaining a favorable attitude from the pasha seemed easy at first: new at his job, the pasha promised the Hungarian count that he would not meddle with the work of his engineers. But in autumn 1833, when the Austrian engineers were about to move into Ottoman territory, he changed his mind, only allowing explorations on the Wallachian bank of the river.Footnote 42 Confining access to the Wallachian bank was of no use, however, to the engineers, who needed to collect data from both sides of the river to complete their mapping of the area. Széchenyi attempted several times to obtain the pasha's official approval, but ultimately failed. His visits and correspondence were nevertheless not entirely in vain: the pasha finally signaled that he would not interfere when regulation efforts restarted in 1834.Footnote 43
Armed with this tacit agreement, the exploration party was ready to continue its work on Serbian and Wallachian territory in 1834. Favorable meteorological conditions that year made the prospects of success appear very high. Following a dry summer, the water level had sunk to an unprecedented low, uncovering many of the rocks that had remained hidden in previous years. The shallow water not only allowed for a better assessment of the rocks, but also made their removal easier and much cheaper. Seeing an opportunity to remove this major blockage of the Danube, Széchenyi pushed the Austrian authorities for a decision. The archduke's response finally gave him permission to proceed with the blasting—even without formal Ottoman authorization.Footnote 44 But Széchenyi then received different instructions from Metternich, namely, to restrict his activity to the Austrian side of the border until Constantinople had issued its official consent.Footnote 45 Relying on the archduke's endorsement, Széchenyi requested that Metternich allow him to pursue the project under false pretenses: he suggested they tell the Porte that the company merely wished to find a suitable place for the DDSG ships to spend the winter—when, in fact, the engineers would carry out the regulation project.Footnote 46 Officials in Vienna did not expressly prevent him from doing this, but did not provide an endorsement either. In the end, the Ottoman military did not interfere when Széchenyi's engineering crew crossed the border in September 1834, but did closely monitor its activities.Footnote 47
The removal of rocks from the riverbed continued through the autumn of 1834 and was almost completed when official consent finally arrived from the Porte. It was not the promise of future economic prosperity that ultimately brought about this change of heart on the part of the Ottoman government, but rather diplomatic pressure from the Habsburg and Russian Empires, the other two major actors on the Lower Danube. Ottoman authorities did not focus on economic gain because they were more interested in the strategic value of the area. Having lost control of the mouth of the Danube to Russia as a result of the Treaty of Adrianople, the Porte was not keen to relinquish control over another important strategic site.Footnote 48 And that was essentially what the Austrian representatives were requesting: the right to utilize the river for their own benefit.Footnote 49
The decision to allow engineering work to proceed was ultimately a local one. Whereas the governments in Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Constantinople were making a power play and testing the extent of their influence, local actors found a modus vivendi without any help from their superiors. For the Palatine of Hungary, the First Commissioner of the Danube, and the local governor in Vidin, improving the navigability of the Danube was more important than the international position their countries occupied in the Concert of Europe. Given the historic chance to improve the course of the river, they interpreted official orders to suit their own ends. Széchenyi in particular put his personal interest as a stakeholder in the DDSG, and, as a Hungarian representative, before those of his chancellor. His move away from Metternich suggests that, at this early stage, a steamboat connection on the Lower Danube was more of a “Hungarian” project than one of the entire monarchy. At the same time, his successful negotiations with the Pasha in Vidin made the project a joint, transnational one. In short, then, local and regional interests and support had a greater impact on the development of the Iron Gates than did the macropolitical transformations brought about by the Treaty of Adrianople.
The First Engineering Breakthrough at the Iron Gates
The regulation project at the Iron Gates not only caused a high-profile diplomatic conflict, but also sparked debate about appropriate technical solutions for the physical blockage of the Danube—for example, whether one should employ military or civilian personnel. Széchenyi, as the head of the project, cultivated close contacts with civil engineers in Budapest, including Paul Vásárhelyi, a graduate of the Institutum Geometrico-Hydrotechnicum in Pest (the predecessor of the Technical University), whom he chose to serve as chief engineer. This was not an uncontroversial decision, for civil engineering was still a new discipline at the university level, and one that lacked prestige.Footnote 50 The decision seemed even more daring, in fact, because the project was located directly on the Habsburg military frontier, where the military engineer corps was traditionally in charge of geographical surveys and construction activities. The arrival of a civil engineering team at the Iron Gates was thus considered an affront to the authority of the local military engineers, even though the incoming engineers still had to rely on the knowledge and manpower of the military: a thorough exploration of the Iron Gates had not yet been conducted, but members of the border patrols—who frequently crossed the river on a chaika, a special type of galley—were the only Habsburg subjects who possessed some knowledge of the cataracts.Footnote 51
The two different approaches to surpassing the river blockage—blasting the rocks or building a road next to the river—caused another technical dispute: one between hydraulic engineers and road builders over which method offered the best solution to the problem at hand. The decision in favor of one approach was not made according to objective criteria or even cost, but rather a reflection of the new geopolitical order on the Danube, Széchenyi's fascination with the Iron Gates, and the zeitgeist. With respect to the last, river corrections were highly popular at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when steam navigation began to create new challenges for hydraulic engineers. Contemporaries considered the Rhine the best example of how to turn a “wild” river into a navigable artery for steamers in just a few decades. From the 1820s to the time the Iron Gates project was carried out, the engineer Johann Gottfried Tulla completed one of the most famous hydraulic works, which involved straitening the riverbed on the Upper Rhine in the Grand Duchy of Baden.Footnote 52 But the project that bore the greatest similarity to the regulation of the Iron Gates was that of the Middle Rhine, led by the Prussian engineer, Eduard Adolph Nobiling, whose goal was to maximize navigation by creating steady water flow and uniform water depth.Footnote 53 The Bingen reef, an underwater rock barrier flanked by steep canyon walls on both riversides, posed the greatest engineering challenge for this project. Between 1830 and 1832, Nobiling's team managed to carve a gap twenty-three meters wide into the stones with the help of gunpowder and a large chisel-like devise.Footnote 54
Széchenyi was caught up in the fervor of river regulation, and was particularly drawn to the regulation of the Iron Gates, a project he referred to as “his favorite idea.”Footnote 55 This almost Romantic fascination with the gorge made him concentrate his efforts almost exclusively on removing the stone barriers from the Danube. While preparing for the Iron Gates, Széchenyi and Vásárhelyi closely followed the progress being made in Bingen on the Rhine, but several other projects provided inspiration as well.Footnote 56 In January 1834, both men embarked on a month-long continental journey to gather useful information and exchange ideas and experiences related to their project. This was necessary because river regulation was still a new profession in Hungary at the time, making them reliant on the knowledge of foreign colleagues who had already been directly involved in river transformation. Their itinerary took them through Bavaria, France, down the Rhine, and, finally, to the British Iles. They spoke with King Ludwig I in Munich about the planned Danube-Main-Canal between Kehlheim and Bamberg.Footnote 57 Floods around Strasbourg prevented them at their next stop from inspecting the canal that connected the Rhine with the Rhȏne. They met several times in France with Minster for Trade and Public Works Adolphe Thiers to collect information about the progress of engineering on the Rhȏne, Loire, and Garonne; and in Paris they met with a Russian count, Peter von Meyendorff, who had been sent by his government on a similar mission to France (i.e., to collect useful technical data) and who shared with them his knowledge about an 1832 project making the Dnieper River navigable over the cataracts at Poltava. They remained in England until April 1834, touring the entire country up to Liverpool. Széchenyi even commissioned engines for new DDSG ships in Birmingham, where he also bought a dredging machine—which he christened Vidra (otter)—for removing sand at the Iron Gates. He also purchased the most up-to-date engineering equipment, including cranes, shells, and diving bells. Finally, Széchenyi was determined to find at least one experienced operator who knew how to use such equipment.Footnote 58 Vásárhelyi, for his part, used his time in England to discuss his plans with several British hydraulic engineers, from whom he collected valuable input. The most famous of these was Colonel John By, who had just finished building the Rideau Canal in Canada.Footnote 59
With the information and modern equipment they had acquired abroad, Széchenyi and Vásárhelyi returned to the Iron Gates in June 1834 to resume their work, with the latter conducting blasting operations on Habsburg territory at Islacz, Tatchalia, Greben, and Jutz. Following Vásárhelyi's instructions, workers also built a dam in the riverbed, which they secured with stones on one side and fascines on the other.Footnote 60 After exploring and measuring the riverbank and the waterfalls, Vásárhelyi and his men then began blasting the rocks. The water level was low that year because of the draught, and many of the rocks had risen above water and could thus be easily removed. To deal with those below water level, they used so-called safety fuses brought from England that could ignite underwater.Footnote 61 Széchenyi and Vásárhelyi were both enthusiastic about the progress they made: “It is true that, in six weeks, more was accomplished than could have previously been done in ten years—and only at much higher cost.”Footnote 62 Vásárhelyi's final report from December 1834 was much more restrained, however. He confirmed the success of the blasting operation, which was, when compared to a similar operation in Bingen, more successful and cheaper than the one on the Rhine.Footnote 63 At the same time, he admitted that ship navigation remained difficult at the Iron Gates: enough rocks had been cleared to allow the water to reach an appropriate depth for accommodating steamers, but the current and the waterfalls had also grown stronger as a result—an unintended consequence of the blasting. He proposed an additional plan to deal with this challenge, one that involved building a canal next to the Serbian river bank with two locks, one at the entrance and another at the exit.Footnote 64
Once it became obvious that the blasting had only been partially successful, Vásárhelyi decided to build a road between Moldova and Old-Orsova. This project was not seen at the time as an improvement over river navigation, but rather as a prestige project that would improve communication between the Habsburg Monarchy and its new neighbors.Footnote 65 It was nevertheless used by the DDSG after its completion in 1837 as an alternative route to transport goods and passengers in order to avoid the gorge, which was still considered dangerous.Footnote 66 During the construction of the road, there was serious conflict between the civilians and the military engineers who had assessed the terrain prior to the arrival of Vásárhelyi, who was put in charge of supervising the project. Afraid the frictions would get out of hand, Széchnyi asked the Imperial War Council (Hofkriegsrat) to intervene by ordering the military personnel to work under Vásárhelyi's command. Even after such an order arrived from Vienna, the head engineer continued to limit the involvement of the military, relying instead on his men to carry out the project—and even requesting that more civil engineering experts be sent to the Lower Danube. In fact, Vásárhelyi never even mentioned the military in his reports to Széchenyi and Archduke Joseph.Footnote 67
The feeling was apparently mutual, for the military engineers distanced themselves from Vásárhelyi as well. After construction at the Iron Gates had stopped in the summer of 1836 and Vásárhelyi had returned to Pest, Count Karl von Pidoll, a member of the War Council, drafted a report upon returning from a visit to the border regiment in which he recommended a series of prospective improvements on the Danube: that the road be extended from Moldova to Basias, that a canal running alongside the Iron Gates be built on the Serbian side, that the mountain torrents flowing into the Danube be smoothed, and, finally, that all further blasting be postponed—improvements that were very similar to the ones that Vásárhelyi had suggested in his report to Széchnyi, yet the Hungarian engineer and his works were not mentioned even once in Pidoll's report.Footnote 68 The fact that the civilian and the military engineers had chosen not to acknowledge the contribution the other group had made was no accident: because both reported to different superiors in different administrative units in the Habsburg Monarchy, they only described their own activities and could, as a result, claim success for the operation. For Vásárhelyi, as one of the first civilian hydraulic engineers, it was a useful reference for future assignments—one that he was not willing to share with his military counterparts. His success at the Iron Gates therefore helped him assert his professional standing and thus build a career for himself later on. In fact, the regulation of the Iron Gates created demand for a new engineering spezialization that the civil engineers could fulfill. Vásárhelyi and his team had passed the test: not only by breaking through the stone barrier, but also by presenting themselves as capable of overseeing such operations without assistance from the military.
The passage through the gorge remained one of the most dangerous spots on the Danube, yet Széchnyi and his engineering team had nevetheless still accomplished their task by facilitating a connection by ship between the Middle and Lower Danube. Beginning in 1834, a regular steamship service was established on the Danube from Vienna to Galatz and, two years later, to Constantinople. As construction on the riverbed continued, the Danube Steamboat Company established three stations—at Drenkova, Orsova, and Skela Cladova—where passengers could change ships or even rest for the night. When the first steamer navigated the cataracts going downstream on November 1, 1834, it was hailed as a great accomplishment for the engineers, the company, and the ship's crew alike.Footnote 69 It would take another three years (until August 1837) for a steamship to cross the Iron Gates going upstream.Footnote 70
Vásárhelyi's regulation project was nevertheless, in many respects, a provisional undertaking; in fact, several of his technical suggestions were only put into practice later that century when, in 1878, the Congress of Berlin instructed the Hungarian authorities to remove completely the blockage at the Iron Gates.Footnote 71 Navigation consequently remained in an intermediate stage, for the journey over the Iron Gates was undertaken either in flatboats or over the land road—not on board steamships, as originally planned. Steam navigation nevertheless thrived over the following years, finally making the Danube an important artery for passenger and freight transport. The DDSG had started small with only five steamers in 1835, but that number would rise to twenty-two vessels by 1842. The number of passengers and the amount of cargo transported on these ships increased significantly during this period as well: from 17,727 voyagers in 1835, to just over 200,000 in 1842, and from 43,152 quintals (one hundred kilograms) in 1835, to over 400,000 in 1842.Footnote 72 Passengers (and freight) still had to change ship as often as four times on their way to the Black Sea, but a continuous connection now existed on the Lower Danube for the first time.
Crossing the Iron Gates
Travel literature provides a valuable source for assessing the effects that river regulation had on transport along the Danube, offering not only a myriad of eyewitness details about the way in which steam navigation developed during its early phase, but also providing useful insight into how perceptions of space and cultural identity changed once Vienna was linked by water to Constantinople.Footnote 73 As one of the wildest and most romantic spots along the Danube, the Iron Gates fascinated many travelers: “Returning to Orsova, we re-embarked in boats provided by the navigation company, and proceeded to encounter the perils of the Eisern Thor—the Iron Gates of the Danube—which is so apt to be associated in the stranger's imagination with something of real personal risk and adventure.”Footnote 74 Even after the improvements were completed, passing through the gorge remained a complex and sometimes nerve-wracking endeavor. The schedules of the two steamboats on either end of the defile had to be synchronized, and travelers often had to wait several days until they could continue their journey. In addition, the transport of passengers and luggage had to be done separately, and the latter frequently arrived with great delay.Footnote 75
Both carriages and flatboats had to be ready when the steamboats arrived, for the passage was done simultaneously on land and by water.Footnote 76 The less dangerous option for travelers was the land route, but it took longer and was less spectacular. Descriptions of the actual passage by water through the Iron Gates were usually similar: the steep walls, the roar of the waterfalls, and the enormous rocks in the riverbed invariably impressed the passenger, whose boat seemed to be heading toward imminent danger during the journey—only to be rescued at the last moment by skilled pilots and rowers:
We did not feel quite at our ease, nevertheless; for we felt that one touch on the rock would dash the boat in pieces. Once or twice destruction seemed imminent: we were rushing end on to jagged rocks by which there appeared to be no passage: we looked anxiously to the helmsman and felt our confidence in him sensibly diminish. We were on the point of touching, when by a sudden twist of the oars used for the rudder, the boat turned half around, nearly losing her equilibrium as her broadside met the current, then, recovering herself, shot swiftly into a deeper channel. Again we breathed freely.Footnote 77
As late as 1844, ten years after steam navigation had first begun, passage through the Iron Gates still reminded one traveler of Odysseus's mythological journey between Scylla and Charybdis.Footnote 78
Surviving the dangerous waters was a special attraction for travelers, yet the symbolic significance of the passage was even greater: crossing the border between the Habsburg lands and the Ottoman provinces meant stepping from the Occident into the Orient.Footnote 79 Especially for those en route from the German-speaking Habsburg Monarchy, the Iron Gates represented a physical demarcation between between their “own” territory and a “foreign” one. Whereas the Austrian military border was seen as “a colorful mixture of nations,… all of a sudden the scenery gained a foreign character” once on Ottoman territory.Footnote 80 Religious and cultural difference coexisted on one side of the border; it stood for separation on the other. The Austrian travelers' mental maps made them perceive familiarity right up to the border—with the fascinating, though “alien,” Orient starting immediately after the line of demarcation. The idea that this transition toward the “Orient” was a gradual one did not fit their conception of their own identity because it meant that they had to admit to certain shortcomings they typically attributed to the “other”—more precisely, to “uncivilized” or “semi-civilized” societies. The difficulty of the border crossing through the Iron Gates only reinforced this sense of difference and separation, and the perception of the gorge as a clear-cut boundary also had something to do with the specifics of water travel: the traveler only caught glimpses of the changing scenery during the actual journey, but upon disembarking from the ship, the differences in behavior and the surroundings seemed all the more noteworthy.
Yet, once regular steamboat service was established between Vienna and the Ottoman capital, with thousands of passengers traveling onboard Austrian steamers, the image of the Iron Gates as a point of separation in the collective imaginary of travelers was bound to change. Increased traffic made the old fortified border more permeable, but did not wipe away the deep-rooted mental and cultural divisions. Széchenyi traveled extensively to the region before and after the hydraulic works had been completed, and his attitude toward the border itself and toward the provinces beyond remained ambivalent. On the one hand, he organized the space before and after the border into binary oppositions: on one side, the civilized Habsburg lands; on the other, backward, uncultivated places.Footnote 81 He saw himself as a bearer of modernity to this benighted region, in the form of modern transport and engineering knowledge—only to find himself rejected by superstition and narrow-mindedness.Footnote 82 On the other hand, he was one of the first travelers who saw the Danube as a single entity—and not something split into different regional and political sections. As we have seen, Széchenyi set out to transform the Iron Gates from a barrier into a junction. He regarded the Lower Danube (the river itself, not the territories attached to it) as a natural extension of the Habsburg Monarchy up to the Black Sea, and mused about Budapest's future as a maritime harbor.Footnote 83
Other chroniclers of the first Danube voyages also helped weaken the perception of a persistent antagonism between the Occident and Orient by emphasizing the connectivity between the two spaces: “The Orient is now connected through an unbroken chain with Germany, the heart of Europe,” wrote a correspondent of the Wiener Zeitung after a voyage on the Lower Danube in August 1836.Footnote 84 The establishment of this link was portrayed in heroic terms as a conquest, a victory over both nature and human ignorance. It was also at this time that the Danube began to be perceived no longer as being separated into upper, middle, and lower parts, but rather just navigable and unnavigable sections.Footnote 85 The Iron Gates remained an important point of transition, but only one stop of many on the now navigable Danube.
It was not only the anticipated exotic encounter with the Orient that lured travelers on board the steamers: the promise of a “modern” experience was equally attractive to many, who embraced speed and acceleration as a new experience of time and space. The prospect of reaching Constantinople—a destination that had once seemed so distant—in less than two weeks was a powerful incentive to embark upon the journey. In addition, many found the steam company's careful planning of the journey to be fascinating: the tight schedule, the solutions its managers had found to overcome technical and physical obstacles.Footnote 86 As Széchenyi wrote from Orsova on June 18, 1836, “We left Semlin at 3 a.m. and reached Drenkova at noon. And left again at 1 p.m. on the Tünde [a small cutter] and afterwards changed to a rafting boat; we spent one hour at Kazan, then continued our journey and arrived here at 9 p.m. We have come a long way since we started this endeavor!”Footnote 87
For similar reasons, some travelers were explicitly interested in seeing the hydraulic works and in assessing their impact on the Danube, often framing Vásárhelyi's engineering project in a narrative of conquest over the forces of nature. His interventions into the riverbed were made visible to the observer, and their positive effects on improving the navigability of the Danube were held in high esteem.Footnote 88 But even the most enthusiastic and laudatory travelers could not overlook the fact that navigation conditions remained difficult, even dangerous, when crossing the gorge.Footnote 89 They had started out aboard the most advanced form of shipping, only to end up on an ancient means of transport during the most dangerous part of the journey. When they had to change from the steamer to a flatboat, the difference between “modern” and “backward” seemed to have been blurred for many—something perhaps best expressed in the ambivalent image of the Wallachian rowers and pilots: the diligent and reliable employees of the steam company were first contrasted with the lazy Wallachians, who took a nap the moment they were left unsupervised. Yet, travelers soon realized that without their navigational skills and their knowledge of the cataracts, the whole operation would have come to a halt.Footnote 90 Where modern horsepower proved useless, traditional knowledge took up the slack—yet another example of how modernity and tradition clashed at first at the Iron Gates, only to be integrated later into a more eclectic view.
Passengers traveling past the Iron Gates shared a complex experience of adventure, modernity, and symbolic crossings. Passing from the Habsburg lands to the Ottoman Empire meant that they had to renegotiate their own identity, as well as their perception of the foreign places through which they were traveling. When the steamers of the DDSG began to tour the Danube on a regular schedule, they influenced how travelers perceived this mighty river: for the first time, the Danube was seen as a whole entity, regardless of its political and ethnical fragmentation. Austria's successful economic exploitation of the Lower Danube encouraged Vienna's representatives to view the segment beyond the Iron Gates as an extension of their own territory—as a space in which they could exercise their power and influence, but without formally annexing it. Only then was the Habsburg Empire rightfully called the “Danube Monarchy.” This might explain why Austria fought so hard to maintain economic control of the region after the Congress of Berlin, i.e., when the region's newly founded national states aspired to take control of the Danube themselves. Seen in a larger context, Austria's policy on the Lower Danube was an important example of its reluctance to give up its dominant position in the Balkans—a stance that would ultimately fuel the clashes that later sparked World War I.
Conclusion
The question of the extent to which the rectification project carried out at the Iron Gates during the early 1830s was successful is difficult to assess. One might have expected a negative response from a tired traveler whose journey had been interrupted by the passage through the narrow gorge.Footnote 91 By contrast, a representative of the DDSG would have likely left aside the tumultuous journey over the cataracts and instead emphasized the great accomplishment his company had achieved, namely, the establishment of a regular connection between Vienna and Constantinople.Footnote 92 For their part, those engineers who continued the regulation of the Iron Gates during the 1870s and later would have acknowledged at least a partial success.Footnote 93 But the very fact that the Iron Gates needed several major engineering interventions up until the middle of the twentieth century also spoke to the contrary: not until the postwar, state-socialist Romanian and Yugoslav states had built a dam and an artificial canal for navigation would the problem of safely navigating the Iron Gates be “solved”—though at the cost of considerable ecological devastation and human suffering.Footnote 94
After the first attempt by Széchenyi and Vásárhelyi, there were no further interventions to “tame” the river until the 1870s. One explanation for this hiatus involved the rising frictions between the Russians and Ottomans in the decade preceding the Crimean War. Their tense relations shifted the attention and involvement of the international community, including the Habsburg government, further down the Danube to it mouth. The financial difficulties of the DDSG during its first decade were another reason why administrators left the crossing in such a dissatisfactory state. Flawed as passage past the Iron Gate might have been during the early stage of steam navigation, it nevertheless opened up new channels of communication between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. In the first place, economic exchanges along the Lower Danube intensified once the shipping connection between Vienna and Constantinople allowed for a constant flow of goods and people between the two capitals. Second, the route across the Lower Danube became a tourist attraction for many Europeans; as a result, navigation company stations along the Danube grew into small towns that provided necessities for passing travelers. Finally, it significantly improved postal communications between the two empires by the end of the 1830s: it was especially Habsburg consuls stationed in the Balkans who started using DDSG ships to deliver their correspondence faster to Vienna. Besides enabling better communication across the border, the connection also established a different kind of linkage: one that tied the region beyond the Iron Gates mentally closer to Central Europe and Vienna. As a result, steam navigation from the Habsburg Monarchy to the disbanding Ottoman Empire eventually pushed the boundaries of “Europe” further downstream to include the Lower Danube. These tighter economic and cultural links between Vienna and southeastern Europe help explain why the Habsburg Monarchy had such a hard time relinquishing its economic and cultural dominance of the Lower Danube, i.e., until its dissolution in 1918.
