ABSTRACT
In the 1840s none of the provincial towns associate with Victorian industrial and commercial supremacy was a city: Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Nottingham and Hull, were all towns. By the close of Victoria's reign they had all achieved city status. Until the 1880s city status was linked directly to the presence or not of a cathedral. So towns which had cathedrals were cities, and this precedent was maintained when the Anglican Church began re-ordering its diocesan geography in the nineteenth century. In Australia and Canada, city is a term applied to larger units of municipal government under state and provincial authority. In New Zealand the more populous towns are known as boroughs under legislation passed in 1933. But in the United Kingdom this clarity is alien: the whole process of promotion has been and remains obscure. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
