National and International Trade and the Midlands Economy

Abstract

This book: In recent years, traditional interpretations of the processes of industrialisation in Britain have been superceded by a more subtle, macro-economic, gradualist understanding of industrialisation. In particular, commentators have now come to consider the importance of geography and the notion that historical change occurs in space as well as time.

Concentrating on the Midlands, this book, drawing on a wealth of original research by an eminent collection of scholars, seeks to develop a fresh understanding of the complex range of urban industrial activity taking place in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing on the concomitant urbanisation, it explains how regional urban systems both shaped and responded to processes of industrialisation and how urban systems influenced growth and raised the potential for development in particular locales. (Manchester University Press)