ABSTRACT
On the opposite side of the country from Yorkshire, the unprecedented growth of Manchester into an industrial city produced entirely different circumstances from those to be found in either York or Shefeld. There was early industrial growth in the traditional textiles of woollen cloths and linen, and this was followed by the introduction of fustians (which was dependent on cotton imports) and silks (also dependent on importation of the raw material).1 Manchester’s proximity to the Lancashire coalelds meant a variety of new industries emerged from the mid-Tudor period onwards. Geoffrey Timmins indicates that these, together with other extractive industries – iron, lead, copper, alum and limestone – all added to the local economy.2 ‘We came on to Manchester’, wrote Daniel Defoe in about 1725, ‘one of the greatest, if not really the greatest mere village in England’. He was struck by its size and the recent rapidity of its growth, but deplored its lack of formal governance and political muscle.3 Defoe did not need to spell out why Manchester was famous: ‘the Manchester trade we all know; and all that are concerned in it know that it is, as all our other manufactures are, very much increased within these thirty or forty years especially beyond what it was before’.4 Demand grew for cotton goods; these were lighter to wear and easier to clean than woollen goods, and although initially these were supplied by the East India Company, legislation passed in 1721 (and later reinforced in 1736) banned these foreign imports while encouraging the sale of home-made products.5
