The history of the port of Rotterdam coincides with that of the city that has grown up around its large port for centuries. Being the second largest city in the Netherlands in terms of population – about 640,000 citizens – together with The Hague , it is the eleventh largest area by population within the European Union. Because of its location, and because of the great importance of its port, which is not by chance the subject of this article, Rotterdam is often referred to as the “Gateway to Europe”. By the end of this article, this nickname will be absolutely clear and justified. Let us find out more.
The Port of Rotterdam and curious facts about the city
Rotterdam is located in the province of South Holland, in the Dutch language Zuidholland, along a wide bend of the New Meuse River, a branch of the delta where both the Meuse and the Rhine meet. More specifically, the city originated 18 kilometres from the North Sea, where the Rotte flows: the name of the urban centre, in fact, derives from the combination of the words “Rotte” and “dam”, indicating the dam on the Rotte. It seems that there was simply a fishing village here in the ninth century; the birth of the city of Rotterdam is officially dated in 1298, while the rights of cityhood were granted to it in 1340, at the beginning of its long fortune as a flourishing trading centre. So, now, let us briefly describe how the port is currently and then we will take a look at the history of the port of Rotterdam.
The Port of Rotterdam now
At present, the port of Rotterdam extends over a length of 40 kilometres and a width of 10 kilometres. Every year, it accommodates around 30,000 ocean-going ships and 130,00 river vessels, and has around 2,000 hectares of docks, totalling more than 10,00 hectares between docks, storage areas and industrial facilities. In 2022, the port handled a total of 467 million tonnes of goods, not excluding 14.4 million TEUs of containers alone. With such figures, the port of Rotterdam takes the lead as the largest port in Europe, as well as the largest seaport in the world outside of East Asia: it is the third largest port in the world in terms of the amount of goods traded, after the ports of Shanghai and Singapore; until 2004, the record was in the hands of the Dutch port. During the health emergency, and especially during the Chinese lockdown caused by the Omicron variant, the port of Rotterdam has, however, regained importance on the world logistics scene. But how did it come to be such a large and such an important port in Europe? We retrace the steps in the evolution of the port of Rotterdam, since the Middle Ages.
The history of the Port of Rotterdam
Currently, the area in which the Port of Rotterdam is located is called the Europoort: in addition to the port area proper, there is the adjacent industrial zone. Yet, it all started with a very small harbour used only for fishermen’s boats, during the 14th century: at that time the harbour of Rotterdam was located in the immediate vicinity of the old city centre. In 1340 there was the first real change of pace, with the transformation of the old harbour into a proper trading port and the construction of a canal to connect Rotterdam with Leyden and Delft, so as to make the transport of wool from England easier. This was the beginning of the long fortune of the Port of Rotterdam, which, however, together with the city, had to face many trials that were anything but easy: think of the siege of 1489 by Maximilian of Austria; the fire of 1563, which brought the city to its knees; as well as the various plunderings suffered by the city, including that of the Spanish, a few years after the great fire.
A watershed year
However, if one had to pinpoint the year in which the Port of Rotterdam took off in the direction towards becoming the colossus of maritime trade that it is today, that would probably be 1872: in that year, the Nieuwe Waterweg – the new waterway, the new canal – was dug, which effectively enabled the Port of Rotterdam to accommodate ocean-going, and therefore large-sized, ships more comfortably. From then on, thanks to the direct access from the sea to the port, the volumes of incoming and outgoing goods increased dramatically, with the Port of Rotterdam connecting Europe with the rest of the world much more efficiently.
The Nieuwe Waterweg in question is 18 kilometres long, and it was precisely its inauguration that later made the creation of new docks necessary: between 1870 and 1940 as many as 20 docks were built, some of them enormous. As the port grew, so did the industrial activities in and around the city, from mines to shipyards to refineries.
The decline followed by the recovery after the World War II
What drastically interrupted the activities and growth of the Dutch port was the Second World War. First, there was the terrible German bombing that destroyed a large part of the city on 14 May 1940, with over 200,000 buildings razed to the ground; then the city fell prey to Allied bombing, to put the Nazi army in a difficult position; finally, there was the German decision to destroy no less than 7 kilometres of docks, in September 1944, to make it impossible for the Allies to use the port for the liberation of the Netherlands.
In the post-war period, the difficult and lengthy reconstruction of the Port of Rotterdam began, but this was cleverly used to expand and modernise the entire port area; in addition to rebuilding the old wharves, new facilities were created in the Botlek area, and then – in the 1960s – the area south of the river was reclaimed, to give way to the Europoort complex, which shortly afterwards became the heart of Europe’s petrochemical and oil-refining industry. It was thanks to these works that by 1962 the port of Rotterdam became the largest port in the world, snatching the record from New York. Further expansions were then carried out in the 1970s in response to the containerisation of shipping, which led, for example, to the expansion of the port in the Maasvlatke area in the 1980s, and finally in the 2010s to an offshore facility in the North Sea, christened Maasvlatke II. This structure opened in 2015 and is expected to be fully completed by 2030.
