Straits

See also: Strait (homonymy)

In the European policy , the “ Détroits ” (substantivized, without more precise details) indicates the long master key between the sea the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, marked by tightening at the ends of the master key, which delimits a very small sea. The Straits are composed of the Dardanelles, a long driving very narrow strait of the Mediterranean to a small sea, the Marmara Sea, this sea, and strait of the the Bosphorus, which leads to the Black Sea.

This point of passage is since highest Antiquity a stake of fight, because its Master controls,

on the maritime level, in the North-South direction, the accesses between northern side the outlets of the the Danube, the large Russian plains and the countries of the the Caucasus; and of the southern part the Mediterranean and thus the rest of the world;
on the terrestrial level, in the East-West direction, passages between the Europe and the Minor Asia, and beyond the Middle East and Asia.

It is thus a big factor of the policy of the Mediterranean powers (or which wish to become it, like the Russian Empire, whose trade suffers from the absence of outlet on a hot and open sea) to obtain the control of the zone or, on the contrary, to restrict the rights of the local power: thus, of many treaties limit the right of the Ottoman Empire and currently, of the Turkey, to block the maritime trade passing by the Straits, or the taxes which it can assert.

Troy and Constantinople (become Istanbul) is two emblematic cities of this crossroads and the fights which proceeded there.

Random links: