Abstract:

The 19th century is an era when one of the harbour cities, Mersin, was set up and developed mainly due to its geographical location. This advantage maintained a development in maritime traffic which showed the reflections of 19th century capitalism. Mersin had a wooden port in the first half of the 19th century, but, with the help of other inner and outer developments, it grew rapidly and  became one of the Ottoman’s important harbour cities throughout East Mediterranean towards the end of the century. With the impacts of those developments, the growth of Mersin in administrative status was rapid as well. In this Ottoman Arcihives document based study, we aimed to point the role of Mersin Harbour maritime traffic both in its city development and in developing Ottoman sea trade in the 19th century.

Keywords: