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Towns, Regions and Industries: Urban and Industrial Change in the Midlands, c. 1700-1840

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: CXXI; Issue: 492 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cel188

1477-4534

Trevor Raybould,

Scottish History and National Identity

This book owes its origin to the project on Urban and Industrial Change in the Midlands, 1700–1840, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, between 1998 and 2001. The editors effectively review the historiography of national and regional perspectives of industrialisation, and reconsider various approaches and concepts. Neil Raven and Tristram Hooley seek to redress the recent emphasis that urbanisation was more a consequence of industrialisation. Extensive use is made of directories and census material for over 90 Midlands towns to reveal a new typology and the role played by clusters or networks of towns. Andrew Hann argues that the traditional emphasis on industrial development has tended to marginalise the service sector. His conclusion, supported by clear statistical evidence, is that the urban system had been recast in the Midlands by the 1840s and that the most highly-developed sectors were now found in towns which successfully combined the roles of manufacturing town and high-order service centre. Raven and Stobart focus on the geography and structure of the transport network and assess its link to urban industrialisation and the processes of regional and sub-regional integration. They conclude that the highly-developed transport network served to integrate the ‘regional space economy’ and impacted on the Midlands in five broadly-defined areas, and that the transport networks were both cause and consequence of industrial organisation and growth. Barrie Trinder shows that many towns that were relatively unaffected by the industrial revolution continued to flourish and became increasingly concerned with the manufacture of consumer goods for national markets. County towns of the east Midlands grew rapidly to 1841 and those of the west Midlands did not—but were not stagnant, as reflected by the diversifying economies of Shrewsbury and Worcester. The new consumer industries of the latter half of the nineteenth century often drew on older skills and financial services, initially supplying local consumers, and expanded to reach national and international markets in the food, footwear, clothing, furniture and printing industries. Part II focuses on particular towns. Stobart and Raven consider Burslem and West Bromwich as examples of new towns of the industrial coalfields, although new towns ‘were comparatively rare’. The economies of both towns moved from proto-industrial activity to new forms of manufacturing, often prompted by changing cultural contexts including fashion. In Burslem it involved a shift to tablewares, and, in West Bromwich, a shift from nails to the manufacture of consumer goods and components. Burslem and West Bromwich became towns because of the agglomeration of service functions and the construction of an urban identity and image. Neighbouring Tipton in the Black Country did not, and remained a collection of industrial and mining communities until the twentieth century. By contrast, John Smith shows that, by the 1840s, the Town Commissioners had constructed in Wolverhampton a civic culture without any significant involvement of the aristocracy or local gentry, and the town received its Charter of Incorporation in 1848. In her chapter on Nottingham, Joyce Ellis asserts that the increasing prosperity and continuing economic dominance of the county towns of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham ‘appears to have no parallel elsewhere in industrialising Britain’. A contrasting study, by Peter Clark, of Loughborough argues that the growth of new industries in old market towns was a vital feature of industrial transformation and poses the question; to what extent the structural features of such towns both generated growth and put a ceiling on that success? Leonard Schwarz shows how Lichfield, a prosperous eighteenth-century town with aspirations to be a regional centre, changed its identity as an indirect beneficiary of the industrialisation of both the east and west Midlands, and, while it failed to become a regional centre, ‘it would be misleading to speak of decline’. Only fifty pages are devoted to Part III, ‘The wider world: regional development in comparative context’. Malcolm Wanklyn discusses the nature and extent of trade and the wide range of goods produced in the region. This is a complex exercise which is carefully crafted to demonstrate the conceptual and practical problems of gathering and evaluating relevant data. Hilde Greefs, Bruno Blondé and Peter Clark explore comparisons between Flanders/Brabant and the east Midlands, the Verviers/Liège and the Birmingham/Black country areas, and the Mons/Charleroi coalmining district and the Black Country—with particular reference to the ownership of mineral rights. Although growth in Belgium was both later and more uneven than the English Midlands, this chapter offers a useful summary of the key dynamics of industrial growth common to both. Steve King synthesises the book's main arguments and stresses the competing models (English and continental) of the key variables underpinning regional industrial development, and the ambiguous role of urbanisation in this process. Whatever future agenda is employed, he concludes, ‘this volume … can surely make wider claims to be a template’. I concur.