Manchester developed over little more than a century from a minor town into the world's first industrial city. Its remarkable history embraces the world's first passenger railway station and first public library. It also led the political and economic reform of nineteenth century Britain as the vanguard of free trade. By the twentyfirst century it had become a post-industrial city dominated by sport, broadcasting and education.
Early settlements: prehistoric and Roman
Before the Roman invasion of Britain, the town's location lay within the territory of the Brigantes. Gnaeus Julius Agricola established a fort at the confluence of the Rivers Irwell and Medlock in 79 CE. He called it Mamucium, which is a Celtic word meaning "breast shaped hill". The ruins of the fort were visible until the eighteenth century; much of the fort area was obliterated when a main railway line was built across it. There is a facsimile of part of a Roman fort in Castlefield. The modern name "Manchester" came from Anglo-Saxon Mameceaster, an example of an Anglo-Saxon place name that incorporates a previous Celtic name.
Medieval growth
In the 14th Century Manchester became home to a community of Flemish weavers, who settled in the town to produce wool and linen, thus beginning the tradition of cloth manufacture.
Growth of the textile trade
By the sixteenth century, the wool trade had made Manchester a flourishing market town. The parish church, now the cathedral, was completed in 1500-1510. The town's growth was given further impetus in 1620 with the start of fustian weaving.
However, the start of the English Civil War in 1642 heralded Manchester's entry into the world of politics and the town's staunch defence of the Parliamentarian faction, led by John Rosworm, was to have repercussions in centuries to come. The town was besieged by Royalist forces in 1642 and, though it lacked city walls, resolutely held out.
On the English Restoration in 1660, as a reprisal for its defence of the Parliamentarian cause, Manchester was deprived of its Members of Parliament. No MP was to sit for Manchester until 1832.
Despite this setback, the town continued to prosper, with St Ann's Church and Square completed in 1712 and Sir Oswald Moseley's Cotton Exchange in 1729.
The Industrial Revolution
Manchester remained a small market town until the late 18th Century, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The myriad small valleys in the Pennine Hills to the north and east of the town, combined with the damp climate, proved ideal for the construction of water-powered Cotton mills such as Quarry Bank Mill, which industrialised the spinning and weaving of cloth.
Manchester, with its transport links to the nearby port of Liverpool, was the natural marketplace for the products of this growing textile industry. With the invention of the Steam Engine, cotton mills no longer required flowing water for power, and larger mills sprang up across the area, in Manchester itself and in the surrounding towns. Manchester quickly grew into the most important industrial centre in the world. Its population exploded as people moved from the surrounding countryside into the city, seeking new opportunities.
The growth of the city was matched by expansion of its transport links, including the world's first steam passenger railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and an extensive local canal network, which provided faster transport of raw materials and finished goods between the port of Liverpool and mills of Manchester. Manchester became the world's first industrial city, and the model for industrial development throughout the western world.
Reform
In 1792, Manchester was still governed by a court leet on the medieval model but its first step towards democracy was taken by the establishment of a modern police force under the Manchester and Salford Police Act.
The end of the eighteenth century saw the first serious recession in the textile trade following its dramatic growth. There were food riots in 1797 and soup kitchens were established in 1799. Popular unrest was parallelled by discontent with Manchester's lack of representation at Westminster and the town quickly became a centre of radical agitation. Protest turned to bloodshed with the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 and the following year, the Manchester Guardian was established with a radical agenda.
In 1832, following the Great Reform Act, Manchester elected its first MPs since the election of 1656. Five candidates, including William Cobbett stood and Liberals Charles Poulett Thomson and Mark Philips were elected.
However, this was also a time when's Manchester's cultural and intellectual life was at its fullest with John Dalton lecturing on his atomic theory at the Literary and Philosophical Society in 1803, and the establishment of the Portico Library (1806), Manchester Royal Institution (1823), Manchester branch of the Bank of England (1826) and the Manchester Botanical and Horticultural Society (1827).
Industrial and cultural growth
The prosperity from the textile industry lead to an expansion of Manchester and the surrounding conurbation. Many instutions were established including Belle Vue leisure gardens and zoo (founded by John Jennison in 1836), the Manchester Athenaeum (1836-1837) and the Corn Exchange (1837).
This wealth fuelled the development of science and education in Manchester. A Mechanics' Institute, later to become UMIST, was founded in 1824 by among others, John Dalton the "father of atomic theory". In 1851 John Owens, a textile merchant left a bequest to found Owens College. This was to become the Victoria University of Manchester and was granted its Royal Charter in 1880.
The growth of city government continued with Manchester finally being incorporated as a borough in 1838. The manorial rights were purchased by the Borough from the Mosley family in 1846 and incorporation as a city followed in 1853. The Manchester diocese of the Church of England was established in 1847. In 1851, the borough became the first local authority to seek water supplies beyond its boundaries.
Manchester continued to be a nexus of political radicalism. From 1842-1844, the German social philosopher Friedrich Engels lived there and wrote his influential book Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). He met with Karl Marx in an alcove at Chetham's Library. The Cooperative Wholesale Society was formed in 1862. In 1841, Robert Angus Smith took up work as an analytical chemist at the Manchester Royal Institution and started to research the unprecedented environmental problems. Smith went on to become the first director of the Alkali Inspectorate and to characterise, and coin the term, acid rain.
The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 saw an immediate shortage of cotton and the ensuing cotton famine brought enormous distress to the area until the war's end in 1865. During the late 19th century Manchester began to suffer an economic decline and the Manchester Ship Canal was built as a way to reverse this. It gave the city direct access to the sea allowing it to export its manufactured goods directly. This meant that it no longer had to rely on the railways and Liverpool's ports. When completed it ensured that Manchester became Britain's third busiest port, despite being 40 miles (64 km) inland.
Twentieth century reds and blues
The stimulus of the Ship Canal saw the establishment of Trafford Park , the world's first industrial park, in 1910 and the arrival of the Ford Motor Company and Westinghouse Electric Corporation from the USA. The influence is still visible in Westinghouse Road and the grid layout of numbered streets and avenues.
In the Second World War Manchester played a key role as an industrial manufacturing city, including the Avro aircraft factory. As a consequence of its war efforts the city suffered heavily from bombing during The Blitz in 1940–1941.
Manchester's key role in the industrial revolution was repeated with its contribution to the computer revolution. The father of modern computing Alan Turing was based at Manchester University and it was his idea of the stored program concept that lead in 1948 to The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine, nicknamed Baby, which was the first stored-program computer to run a program. This was developed by Frederic C. Williams and Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester. This was followed by The Manchester Mark I, in 1949. These inventions were commercialized in the Ferranti Star, one of the first commercially available computers.
The 1950s saw the start of Manchester's rise as a football superpower. Despite the Munich air disaster, Manchester United F.C. went on to become one of the world's most famous clubs, rising to a dominance of the English game in the 1990s.
The advent of commercial television in the UK in 1954 saw the establishment of Granada Television based in the city, continuing Manchester's tradition of cultural innovation, often with its trademark social radicalism in its programming.
The period saw a decline in traditional industries such as textile manufacturing and the Royal Exchange ceased trading in 1968. However, the same period saw the rise to national celebrity of local stars from the Granada TV soap opera Coronation Street and footballers such as George Best.
Fin de siecle
During the 1980s, with the demise of many traditional industries under the radical economic restructuring often known as Thatcherism, the city and region experienced some decline. Revival started towards the end of the decade, catalysed, not only by a wider growing propserity in the UK, but by a creative music industry. New institutions such as Factory Records and Fac 51 Hacienda earned the city the sobriquet Madchester.
On 15 June 1996 Manchester was struck by one of the largest IRA bombs ever detonated in Great Britain. Fortunately warnings received in the previous hour had allowed the evacuation of the immediate area, but over 200 people were injured, and many buildings suffered extensive damage. Since then the city centre has undergone extensive rejuvenation alongside the more general efforts to regenerate previously run-down areas of the wider city (such as Hulme and Salford).
In 2002, the city hosted the XVII Commonwealth Games very successfully, earning praise from many previously sceptical sources.
In the 1990s, Manchester earned a reputation for gang-related crime, particularly after a spate of shootings involving young men, and reports of teenagers carrying handguns as "fashion accessories". Gun-crime is still a problem in Manchester (some have cynically referred to the city as "Gunchester") but a number of initiatives are in place by the Greater Manchester Police to help reduce the number of youths getting involved with gangs and their associated crimes. As a result, gun crime in the area is falling and other cities have overtaken it. The district of Moss Side gained a particular reputation for gang violence, although substantial community and police initiatives have helped rejuvinate the area. In 2004 anti-social behaviour orders were widely used to combat minor crime.
The Canal Street area of the city is well known as the "Gay Village" and the city itself has now been designated as the "Gay Capital of the UK".
During the 1980s, the Victoria University of Manchester had somewhat complacently exploited its reputation as one of the leading red brick universities. During the same period, many of those universities established post-war vigourously pursued policies of growth and innovation. The university consequently saw its standing decline and only in the 1990s did it embark on a catch-up programme. In October 2004 the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST merged to form the University of Manchester, the largest University in the UK with ambitious plans to be one of the world's leading research intensive universities.
Greater Manchester
Before 1974 the area of Greater Manchester was split between Cheshire and Lancashire with numerous parts being independent county boroughs. The area was informally known as "SELNEC", for "South East Lancashire North East Cheshire". Also small parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire (around Saddleworth) and Derbyshire were covered.
SELNEC had been proposed by the Redcliffe-Maud Report of 1969 as a "metropolitan area". This had roughly the same northern boundary as today's Greater Manchester, but covered much more territory in north-east Cheshire – including Macclesfield and Warrington. It also covered Glossop in Derbyshire.
In 1969 a SELNEC Passenger Transport Authority was set up, which covered an area smaller than the proposed SELNEC, but different to the eventual Greater Manchester.
Although the Redcliffe-Maud report was rejected by the Conservative Party government after it won the 1970 general election, it was committed to local government reform, and accepted the need for a county based on Manchester. Its original proposal was much smaller than the Redcliffe-Maud Report's SELNEC, but further fringe areas such as Wilmslow, Warrington and Glossop were trimmed from the edges and included instead in the shire counties. The metropolitan county of Greater Manchester was eventually established in 1974.
Greater Manchester's representative county council was abolished in 1986, following the Local Government Act 1985. However, Greater Manchester still persists as an administrative county and ceremonial county.
See also
Textiles
Railway history
Univeristies
Manchester's famous Scientists include
Manchester's famous Engineers include
