History of Birmingham
A combination of immigration, innovation and civic pride helped to bring about major social and economic reforms and create the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the growth of similar cities across the world.
The last 200 years have seen Birmingham rise from market town to the fastest-growing city of the 19th century, spurred on by a combination of civic investment, scientific achievement, commercial innovation and by a steady influx of migrant workers into its suburbs.
By the 20th century Birmingham had become the metropolitan hub of the United Kingdom's manufacturing and automotive industries, having earned itself a reputation first as a city of canals, then of cars, and most recently as a major European convention and shopping destination.
[7] Neolithic axes found across Birmingham include examples made of stone from Cumbria, Leicestershire, North Wales and Cornwall, suggesting the area had extensive trading links at the time.
[13] Although no archeological evidence has been found, the presence of the Old English prefix wīc- in Witton (wīc-tūn) suggests that it may have been the site of a significant Romano-British vicus or settlement, which would have been adjacent to the crossing of the River Tame by Icknield Street at Perry Barr.
[32] Birmingham itself and the parishes in the centre and north of the area were probably colonised by the Tomsaete or "Tame-dwellers", who were Anglian tribes who migrated along the valleys of the Trent and the Tame from the Humber Estuary and later formed the kingdom of Mercia.
[49] Surviving documents record the widespread enclosure of wasteland and clearance of woodland in King's Norton, Yardley, Perry Barr and Erdington during the 13th century, a period over which the cultivated area of the manor of Bordesley also increased twofold.
[57] Trade through Birmingham diversified as a merchant class arose, however: mercers and purveyors are mentioned in early 13th century deeds,[56] and a legal dispute involving traders from Wednesbury in 1403 reveals that they were dealing in iron, linen, wool, brass and steel as well as cattle in the town.
[62] This route from Droitwich is shown on the Gough Map of the mid-14th century and described by the contemporary Ranulf Higdon as forming part of one of the "Four Great Royal Roads" of England, running from Worcester to the River Tyne.
[64] The establishment of a rival market at Deritend in the neighbouring parish of Aston had led them to acquire the hamlet by 1270,[65] and the family is recorded enforcing the payment of tolls by traders from King's Norton, Bromsgrove, Wednesbury, and Tipton in 1263, 1308 and 1403.
[70] Manufacturing is likely to have been stimulated by the existence of the market, which would have provided a source of raw materials such as hides and wool, as well as a demand for goods from prosperous merchants in the town and from visitors from the countryside selling produce.
An inventory of the personal possessions of the Master of the Knights Templar in England at the time of their suppression in 1308 includes twenty two Birmingham Pieces: small, high value items, possibly jewellery or metal ornaments, that were sufficiently well known to be referred to without explanation as far away as London.
[103] Despite a series of plagues throughout the 17th century,[104] by 1700 Birmingham's population had increased fifteenfold and the town was the fifth-largest in England and Wales,[105] with a nationally important economy based on the expanding and diversifying metal trades,[106] and a reputation for political and religious radicalism firmly established by its role in the English Civil War.
[121] The bewty of Bremischam, a good market towne in the extreme partes that way of Warwike-shire, is in one strete goynge up alonge almoste from the lefte ripe of the broke up a mene hille by the lengthe of a quartar of a mile.
[127] Over the course of the 17th century the lower-skilled nail, scythe and bridle trades – producing basic iron goods for local agricultural markets – moved west to the towns that would later make up the Black Country, while Birmingham itself focused on an increasingly wide range of more specialist, higher-skilled and more lucrative activities.
[133] The first signs of Birmingham's growing political self-consciousness can be seen from the 1630s, when a series of puritan lectureships provided a focus for questioning the doctrines and structures of the Church of England and had a widespread influence throughout surrounding counties.
Twice repulsed by the small force of 200 defenders behind hastily erected earthworks, the Royalist cavalry outflanked the defences and overran the town in the Battle of Birmingham, before burning 80 houses and leaving behind the naked corpses of fifteen townspeople.
[141] Highly active, and operating largely independently of the parliamentarian hierarchy, to Royalists Fox came to symbolise a dangerous and uncontrolled overturning of the established order, with his background in the Birmingham metal trades seeing him caricatured as a tinker.
[155] Analysis of the subject-matter of Lunar Society meetings shows that its main concern was with pure scientific investigation rather than manufacturing,[156] and the influence of Midlands Enlightenment thinkers can be seen in areas as diverse as education,[157] the philosophy of mind,[158] Romantic poetry,[159] the theory of evolution[160] and the invention of photography.
A distinctive and significant feature of the Midlands Enlightenment, however, that partly resulted from Birmingham's unusually high level of social mobility, was the close relationship between the practitioners of theoretical science and those of practical manufacturing.
[164] The intellectual climate of 18th century Birmingham was therefore unusually conducive to the transfer of knowledge from the pure sciences to the technology and processes of manufacturing, and the feeding back of the results of this to create a "chain reaction of innovation".
[175] The most notable technological innovation of the Midlands Enlightenment, however, was the 1775 development by James Watt and Matthew Boulton of the industrial steam engine, which incorporated four separate technical advances to allow it to cheaply and efficiently generate the rotary motion needed to power manufacturing machinery.
[176] Freeing the productive potential of society from the limited capacity of hand, water and animal power, this was arguably the pivotal development of the entire industrial revolution, without which the spectacular increases in economic activity of the subsequent century would have been impossible.
[230] The more radical Swinney's Birmingham Chronicle, which caused controversy in 1771 by serialising Voltaire's Thoughts on Religion,[231] boasted in 1776 that it circulated across nine counties and was "filed by coffeehouses in practically every centre of any size from Edinburgh southwards".
[235] A distinct and powerful "Birmingham interest" emerged decisively with the election of Thomas Skipwith at the Warwickshire by-election of 1769,[236] and over following decades candidates for seats as far afield as Worcester, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leicester and Lincoln sought support in the town.
His philosophy inspired a group of reformers – including Joseph Chamberlain, Jesse Collings, George Dixon, and others – who from the late 1860s onwards began to be elected to the Town Council as Liberals, and to apply these ideas in practice.
[262] Planning, development and municipal functions were increasingly dictated by national policy and legislation; council finances came to be dominated by central government subsidies; and institutions such as gas, water and transport were taken out of the city's control.
[272] Economic adaptation and restructuring over the previous half century had left the West Midlands well represented in two of the British economy's three major growth areas – motor vehicles and electrical equipment[273] – and Birmingham itself was second only to London for the creation of new jobs between 1951 and 1961.
[279] At least 39,000 jobs were directly transferred out of the West Midlands by factory movement between 1960 and 1974,[280] and planning measures were instrumental in local firms such as the British Motor Corporation and Fisher and Ludlow expanding in South Wales, Scotland and Merseyside instead of Birmingham.
[285] Service sector employment in the Birmingham conurbation grew faster than in any other region between 1953 and 1964, and the same period saw 3 million sq ft of office space constructed in the city centre and Edgbaston.
