ABSTRACT
Britain has always been a regionally divided nation. Throughout the middle-ages the English counties south of the Humber, Trent, and Mersey contained at least 80 per cent of England's tax-paying population and five sixths of its taxable wealth. They were also much more urbanised; with the exceptions of York and Newcastle, the south contained all of England's largest towns and the vast majority of its urban population. Industrialisation and urbanisation were dominated by the massive expansion of Glasgow, which eventually came to account for an even larger proportion of Scotland's population than London did for England and Wales. The rapid growth of new industrial centres continued during the nineteenth century, transforming Britain from a nation uniquely dominated by its capital to one noted for great provincial industrial cities. One key feature distinguishing the nineteenth-century industrial geography of Britain from its modern pattern was its extreme local and, to a lesser extent, regional specialisation by sector.
