So, let’s say I wanted to ship something from Halifax to Miami, how would I go about
doing so?
Okay, great job, smart-ass, but how about another way?
What if I told you that you could sail a boat this way through Michigan?
Surprise!
Oceans are not the only way you can ship something by water, and port cities do not have to be
touching an ocean.
Rivers and canals do what oceans cannot do, and go way further inland, which is obvious,
but connecting these inland population and resource centers means trillions for the world
economy, as trading by water is vastly cheaper than by land or air.
Okay, let’s get that Halifax to Miami shipment out of the way first.
So first, we’re going to go and curve around Nova Scotia, and then into the St. Lawrence
River, passing Québec City and Montreal until you hit Lake Ontario.
From there, it’s literally smooth sailing until you try to get into Lake Erie, not because
of land, but because of water, dangerous water that is, because this is Niagara Falls.
Fortunately for commerce, there’s the Welland Canal, literally right next to it, making
it the Maginot Line-meme of the Great Lakes.
After that, you head through Detroit, passing another set of locks to adjust your altitude
to match that of Lake Michigan-Huron, connected through that little strait that separates
Michigan into two.
Then you head into Chicago, go down the Chicago river, go through a few canals, and head down
the Illinois River until you hit the Mississippi just north of St. Louis.
From there, just head out through New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico and find Florida from
there.
You can do it yourself, you’re a big boy.
And like that, you have successfully shipped something down the east coast the seemingly
non-sensible way, proving how the eastern third of the US is actually technically an
island!
Speaking of which, what was in that shipment you were sending?
Oh, god-Jesus, why?!
So, where else can we go?
What other landlocked countries can we visit?
Well first off, South America has an in depth system of rivers and lakes that go surprisingly
far inland, which is actually the reason why Bolivia can have a navy.
As long as they don’t get on Brazil’s bad side.
This brings us conveniently over to the discussion of sovereignty, as rivers are still sovereign
territory of the countries they flow through.
However, some waterways are considered international passageways, and ships travelling through
them cannot be taxed or blocked.
This is most notable in Europe, where there are a lot of landlocked, but still well developed
countries.
Probably the most important river in Europe is the Danube, which starts in Germany, and
flows through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, and
provides many of these countries with an important link to the Black Sea, and the North Sea through
the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal.
However, as anyone who’s been to Istanbul would know, the Black Sea comes to a chokepoint
when going through the Bosphorus, which gives Turkey (and therefore NATO) immense control,
as these passages can still be shut off during times of war.
Looking at you, Russia.
The Black Sea’s importance is even more clear when considering the Volga-Don Canal
in Russia, which also provides shipping access to the Caspian Sea and its oh-so precious
supplies of oil.
This 101-km canal also gives Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan important access to the sea
that Uzbekistan still somehow managed to miss out on.
In Egypt and the Middle East, the importance of rivers has been seen since the dawn of
civilization.
In Egypt, the Nile was basically everything, as it provided not just a source of transportation,
but also water for basically everything you would need water for in an otherwise desolate
environment.
I mean, even 3,000 years later, the population spread of Egypt still looks like this.
Turns out, water is pretty damn nice to have in a desert.
The people of ancient Iraq especially knew this, I mean, the term Mesopotamia literally
means “land between the rivers”, specifically the Tigris and the Euphrates.
However, nearby Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world not to have any rivers,
which it actually uses somewhat to its advantage, as the immense desert shields Riyadh from
potential land attacks.
Of course, what can defend can also isolate, and if you want to get from Riyadh to Jeddah,
it’s going to be a long drive.
There are innumerable other examples of rivers connecting the world’s waterways and giving
otherwise landlocked countries access to the ocean, from the San Juan River in Nicaragua,
to the Niger River in all these countries, or never mind how much of Russia you can go
through by boat.
In reality, shipping something by water is a lot more efficient than shipping by land,
as all the energy you really need to exert is basically…
Row harder!
Okay, I’m going to take a quick nap now.
But rivers are even better than oceans, as they’re calmer and harder to get lost in,
making them the superhighways of the day before actual roads made it cool.
Nature provided us with these major lifelines, which we’ve corrected a bit through canals.
Now it’s super perfect!
You see, this is brilliant, but I like this.
Thank you as always for watching, and if you found this video informative and/or entertaining
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See you on Thursday!