Were large "Ports" such as London, Amsterdam, Lisbon etc..similar to large Int. Airports, except using Ships?

how similar and how different to modern international air ports?

and which ports in Europe were the LARGEST? And why for that?



why is London today the BIGGEST port in Europe? and how compared in size is Heathrow to JFK or other large airport?



did these %26quot;Harbours?%26quot; btw, which names they used for these mostly in European languages? have ships from ALL OVER the world coming to park in them and how much immigration took place, besides just the exchange of money and goods?



please explain what you can. and give any dates you can too. when , how , why all this started? and where mostly?



thansk for your answers!Were large %26quot;Ports%26quot; such as London, Amsterdam, Lisbon etc..similar to large Int. Airports, except using Ships?I suppose you could say they were pretty similar to airports for their time, yes. For example, they brought in new immigrants and cargo, they were a sign of great wealth and prestige. They were also a sign of military strength, which I suppose you could say about an airport if it operated both military and civilian aircraft.

The largest ports in Europe were those on estuaries where the terrain is flat, the waters calm and the location sheltered from storms - examples include London (River Thames) Le Havre (River Seine) and Rotterdam (River Rhine). Ports in the best position by nature grew to be the most prosperous - those with the easiest tides, the closest access to other forms of transport and areas of population, were the most busy. Logic dictates that a port miles from anywhere in a pre-automotive age would not do well.



London grew to be so large and so significant due to the success of the British Empire and the increased trade this brought, as well as the fact that London is well situated on a tidal river and at the heart of a populous and fairly rich nation. In terms of square mileage, it's difficult to say, but London's Docks probably covered an area bigger than Heathrow airport in their heyday.

Today, JFK is the largest airport in the world, but Heathrow is the busiest.



European languages: words for port or harbour.

English: Port, Harbour, Dock

French: Harvre, Port

Spanish: Puerto

German: Hafen

Dutch: Haag (I think)



In London, certainly, it was possible to find ships from all over the world in the nineteenth century. Immigration was on a small scale but very varied: London certainly had small Jewish, African, Indian and Chinese communities in the early 19th century and some were much older. Even going back to ancient times ports were centres of immigration - Jews, Greeks, Numidians and many more people settled in Rome as a result of disembarking at Ostia further up the River Tiber.



Humans have been trading with each other for thousands of years. Carthage, for example, was a great trading power 2,300 years ago; Greece too. As long as people have been building sea-going ships there has been maritime trade. Trade really boomed under the Roman Empire due to Rome's constant demand for slaves and grain and the rest of its Empire's demand for wine and marble. Trade between nations existed before this time, of course, but the Romans brought it to a scale that would not be seen again for hundreds of years. Once the Age of Sail got going from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, trade reached new heights - the %26quot;triangular trade%26quot; was particularly profitable.

This involved:

British merchants buying guns, nails, beads and cloth

Sailing to West Africa and exchanging their goods for slaves

Sailing to the Americas (Brazil, the Caribbean and the Thirteen Colonies/USA) and selling the slaves in exchange for tobacco, cotton and sugar

Returning home to England and selling the American goods for a healthy profit.



The big ports especially notable for this were Bristol and Liverpool.



The advent of steam power revolutionised trade - Steam ships could cross the seas much quicker, and railways could deliver goods inland equally quickly. This led to an extended boom in trade - so reliant was Europe on maritime trade in 1914 that when the first world war came, blockades caused serious hardship - the Germans attempted to cut off all supplies to the UK by sinking merchant ships with their submarines, and the British used their large and powerful navy to stop all ships from stopping in Germany - the British were more successful because the Germans were too weak to destroy the Royal Navy and too reliant on imported food.