ABSTRACT
For most of its history, the northern region was relatively poor and backward, its resources exceeded by those of the fertile South and East. The situation was transformed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when industrial and commercial expansion conferred unprecedented levels of importance. Perhaps the only parallel to this prominence existed during Northumbrian supremacy within Anglo-Saxon England. (Barrow 1969, 1)
These changes were not only important within regional and national history, but possessed wider significance. They reflected opportunities offered by a changing world in the Age of Coal, Iron and Steam, opportunities which the North was well placed to exploit. Total international trade amounted to about £800 million in 1850, nearly £3,000 million in 1880 and passed £8,000 million by 1914. (Ashworth 1975, 14-15) Within this growth, one of the most portentous developments in history, the British share was large, and a substantial portion was taken by the four northern counties. Even if this prominence did not prove permanent, the North’s role in making the modern world may have been the region’s greatest contribution to the evolu tion of human society. Before 1850 the transition to an urbanized and indus trialized society was under way, but the pace then accelerated. (McCord 1995)
The price of importance was vulnerability to wider events. Rails ex ported from the region equipped railways which opened fertile interiors of remote continents to world trade with eventual consequences for British agriculture. Distant instability could exercise baleful influence, as in the ill effects of the American Civil War on Carlisle’s cotton industry.
