The Interviewees
Interview with Roland Dussart-Desart - February 2023 - français
1- What relations did the Ottoman and Levantine notables maintain with Belgium through the establishment of Belgian tram companies?
The companies operating trams in the Ottoman Empire were most often companies under Ottoman law whose shares were majority held by companies under Belgian law (or replaced by French under the regime of the mandate for Syria and Lebanon). Ottoman notables therefore sat in local companies, alongside expatriate executives who were responsible for operational management. In addition to these personalities often chosen to reward or use their influence with the Ottoman administration, closer relations existed with the Ottoman lawyers or prospectors who were frequently invited to Brussels or Paris to develop projects or settle disputes. Emmanuel R. Salem, a lawyer in Constantinople, is one of these most active “go-betweens”.
2- What impact did the development of Belgian tramways in the Ottoman Empire have on relations between Belgium and the various political actors in the latter?
Virtually all tram networks in the Ottoman Empire were installed and/or equipped by Belgian interests; it was only in Constantinople that a real international consortium (with Brussels as its headquarters) was able to reconcile German interests, in particular, who saw this as a major political issue. The strength of the Belgian actors – and the diplomats who assisted them – was that they could not be suspected of imperialist or colonialist visions in the Ottoman Empire. It was therefore without a second thought and on a pragmatic basis that the Belgian and Ottoman interlocutors were able to find common ground concluded, it is true, by means of substantial prebends (called “sacrifices”) offered to the decision-makers.
3- You have also published works on Belgian tramways in Egypt and Russia: what are the vestiges today of the Belgian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Caucasus?
There are hardly any vestiges of the trams installed by Belgian interests on the territory of Russia before the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, except perhaps for a few depots. Most of the Belgian networks have been equipped with metric gauge tracks. After 1917, these networks were often rebuilt with the wide gauge of 1524 mm, which made obsolete the rolling stock of Belgian origin from the thirties. The latest network to accomplish this transformation is the Odessa network in Ukraine, whose last meter-gauge trams ran in the 1970s, but they were already locally built vehicles. Networks that have not been converted have most often seen trams replaced by trolleybuses. To my knowledge, no Belgian-built tramway has been preserved in the territories of the former Tsarist Russia. From contacts with Russians, I note that the memory of the Belgian presence is still vivid, even if this feeling is torn between gratitude for the creation of jobs and the improvement of mobility, on the one hand, and the feeling to have been “colonized” by foreign interests, on the other hand.
In Egypt, two former Belgian-built trams, one from the Cairo network and the other from Heliopolis, have been installed in front of Edouard Empain’s Hindu Palace in Heliopolis. Another Cairo tram is preserved in a film studio in Giza.
In Greece, several trams in (Thessaloniki) Salonika have been saved and are awaiting restoration in conjunction with the upcoming inauguration of the metro.
In Turkey, one of the old trams in service on the Istiklal Caddesi, in Istanbul, is of Belgian construction for the body and German for the electrical equipment.
In Lebanon, a trailer of urban trams survives in the heights of Beirut, but on a precarious basis.
Interview conducted by Coline Houssais