ABSTRACT
Maps 5.39 to 5.46 give an idea of the growth in value of overseas trade at individual ports. However, because they are in current prices they do not reflect accurately growth in real terms or in volume. Prices fell in the late nineteenth century so the rise in real terms was greater than indicated; conversely price inflation between the 1900s and 1930s, and much more steeply between the 1930s and 1980s, means that the real increase is overstated. In the nineteenth century, because exports were mostly manufactured goods, ports like Liverpool, close to the cotton textile centre of Manchester, Hull and Grimsby near the West Riding woollen and worsted areas, Glasgow, with its shipbuilding, iron and steel, and engineering businesses, and Newcastle and its hinterland of shipbuilders, armaments, engineering, and bulk chemical firms, were crucial export ports. Other towns close to industrial hinterlands and coal pits also feature on Map 5.40: Cardiff and Leith. London had its mass of heterogeneous industries and also acted as a marshalling point for exports. There is little change by the early twentieth century except that Manchester, a totally new creation as a port thanks to the ship canal opened in 1894, appears; although it bit into Liverpool’s trade, it did not knock it from top spot. The rapid growth in Southampton’s exports was caused by much improved dock facilities attracting the transatlantic liner trade.
