Bristol & the Competition

 

Liverpool & Manchester were at the heart of the industrial revolution but they had formidable competition from Bristol, Birmingham & the Clyde, Tyne & Wear -

Bristol

Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 two significant Royal monopolies were broken -

in 1689 The Mines Royal Act saw an end to the Royal monopoly in metal mining. The Act specified that 'no mine of tin, copper, iron or lead, shall hereafter be adjudged, reputed, or taken to be a royal mine although gold or silver may be extracted out of the same', thus releasing an entrepreneurial flurry. By the turn of the century two groups of influential Quakers had established major industrial investments in metal processing at Gadlys, Flintshire and Baptist Mills, Bristol.

in 1698 the London monopoly of the Royal African Company collapsed and the Bristol merchants engaged in the lucrative trade in slaves which they dominated from 1720 to 1740 ... by the mid 18th century Bristol became England's second biggest city ... Britain was flooded with goods imported via Bristol including sugar cane, tobacco, rum and cocoa ... all products of the slave trade ...

Baptist Mills right on the edge of Stapleton Road was viewed by some as the birthplace of the industrial revolution.

The Bristol Brass Works Company was established at Baptist Mills in 1702. Nehemiah Champion (a Merchant from Stapleton) was a partner in the Company and Abraham Darby (1678-1717) was the innovative manager -

- Baptist Mills was close to the City and Port of Bristol and the slave trade
- there was water power from the River Frome
- both charcoal and coal were available locally
- copper manufacturing had been established in the area at Conham in 1698
- calamine zinc ore was available close by from the Clifton Downs and the Mendip Hills
- there was room for establishment and expansion

Two important industrialists emerged from the operations at Baptist Mills – Abraham Darby and William Champion.

Abraham Darby went on to greater things at Coalbrookdale in 1708/9 and it was there that he made scientific and industrial advances of great importance ... cast iron pots & blast furnaces.

Nehemiah had three enterprising sons, the eldest being John (1705-1794), Nehemiah (1709-1782) and the youngest William (1710-1789). In 1738 William Champion took out a British patent for the invention of distilling metallic zinc from calamine by reduction with charcoal or coal. Slowly calamine brass was superseded.

Thomas Gouldney (1620-1694) was the son of Gabriel Gouldney, a prosperous clothier of Chippingham. Thomas was apprenticed to Theophilus Betheland a Bristol grocer in 1637. He was attracted to Bristol because it was a thriving port with 'a flourishing trade to the West Indies' where his father had successful 'trading interests'.

Thomas Gouldney II (1664 - 1731) was the son of the above Thomas Gouldney, born in 1664 and also a Quaker. Gouldney used his considerable riches to back Abraham Darby and his iron factory.

The brass industry thrived in Bristol for 40 odd years until pollution of the River Avon became problematic and in the late eighteenth century manufacturers elsewhere in the country managed to break the monopolies established by Bristol.

Liverpool expanded rapidly with the rise of the Lancashire Cotton trade. When canals were built goods which had once been sent to Bristol from the north midlands down the River Severn were now sent to Liverpool instead.

The cotton industry failed to develop in the city; sugar, brass and glass production went into decline and Abraham Darby had left Bristol for Coalbrookdale. Perhaps complacency and inertia set in as prominent mercantile families failed to invest ... a serious handicap as significant capital was required to adjust to the new conditions of the Industrial Revolution. Bristol was also a very expensive port to use. The Merchant Venturers of Bristol, who controlled the overseas trade, collected all sorts of payments from Bristol traders. These included charges or anchorage, moorage, cranage, for upkeep of lighthouses in the Bristol Channel and for the right to use the quays. Guiding the ships through the Avon Gorge was difficult, which meant that pilots' charges were greater in Bristol than elsewhere.

In 1807 slavery was abolished and in spite of the heroic efforts of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Bristol finally lost the competitive battle with Liverpool as the leading trading port.

Furthermore Bristol had grown wealthy through its harbour. Yet for centuries strong tides left vessels half buried in mud at low water. Seagoing ships had always had problems using Bristol's relatively shallow port. The port had one of the highest tidal ranges in the world making its exceedingly difficult navigate. The problem was alleviated in the early 19th century, when a stretch of the River Avon was enclosed to create a deep water pool - the Floating Harbour. Liverpool, unlike Bristol, has a very large deep waterfront, easily accessible to ships of the day and not affected by tidal range. Ships could be unloaded and reloaded very much more quickly, which further reduced mooring/docking charges. By the time Bristol's Floating Harbour was completed, many merchants had made the move to Liverpool and did not wish to return to Bristol. As a result of these advantages, Liverpool merchants were able to sell slaves £4 or £5 cheaper than Bristol merchants. The demand for slaves carried in Liverpool ships rose. By the middle of the 18th century Liverpool was sending twice as many ships to West Africa as Bristol; by the end of the 18th century, Liverpool had over 60% of the entire British trade and 40% of the entire European trade. No city was ever to so overwhelmingly control the trade again.

Even though new docks were built at Avonmouth in the 1870s, the port declined, it was not ideally suited to the massive ships that new technologies were making possible. With few industrial towns nearby, the port failed to keep pace with the newer manufacturing centres such as Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester ...

Birmingham

Birmingham had a lot going for it; it is old, for sure, all roads lead there, it is central in the kingdom, it is high & healthy, the dry red sand drains well,  coal & iron ore are in great plenty, for war, husbandry, carpentry & kitchens,

Birmingham's sturdy sons of freedom were strongly parliamentarian. But history really started at the Restoration ... the town grew, unrestricted, northwards towards the coal. William Hutton, was succinct -

 'Birmingham's amazing increase, which began about the restoration depended upon her manufactures, her manufactures depended on national commerce, which depended upon superiority at sea ...'

and education -

 'Perhaps there is not by nature so much difference in the capacities of men, as by education. The efforts of nature will produce a ten fold crop in the field, but those of art, fifty. The seeds of every virtue, vice, inclination & habit, are sown in the breast of every human being, though not in an equal degree. Some lie dormant, no hand inviting their cultivation ... others flourish. It is easy to give instances of people whose distinguishing characteristic is idleness, but when they breathe the air of Birmingham, diligence becomes the predominant feature. The view of profit, like the view of corn to a hungry horse, excites to action. The commercial spirit of Birmingham has penetrated beyond the confines of Britain, and the whole of Europe, West Indies and America are acquainted with the Birmingham merchant. The town is full of inhabitants and the inhabitants full of industry and though industry is the ruling passion, relaxation must follow, in the tavern, in the coffee house, in the music theatre & on the game field. Genius seems to increase with multitude. Man seems formed for variety, a sameness of temper, habit, diet, pursuit, or pleasure is no part of his character, and different ages of his life produce different sentiments ' ... differences which are at the root of profitable exchange ...

After the restoration every city town & village in England had a separate independent commercial jurisdiction of its own, powering specialisation, scale & exchange. Birmingham did not specialise in wool, linen, silk nor cotton but with abundant coal, iron ore and excellent foundry sand the town became the leading centre in England for casting, stamping and metal manufacturing. Buttons, buckles, bridles, swords, scythes, steel, guns, toys, nails, locks, bellows, printing, brass, metalwork, and anything in iron ... Hackney Carriages ... then the banks ...

Around 1700 the doubling of the population was caused by immigration from the surrounding towns and villages. Birmingham was gaining a reputation as a town where things were progressing in trade and manufacturing ... industrialisation had taken hold. Corn mills were being converted to the production of metal rolling & ironwork and new mills sprang up all around the town.

Birmingham developed its own culture, as, of course, did London, Bristol, Liverpool & Manchester ... those that followed were preoccupied by attempting to imitate the 'emergent whole' of the industrial revolution, ignorant of the reality of the intense local interactions which produced the emergent phenomena ... no wonder so many have failed to industrialise ... Birmingham did not have any pompous municipal corporation orchestrating & taxing its industrialisation, it was unfettered by the charterial restrictions & the guilds, a truly free city ... but freedom with a caveat, the ancient tort laws protected all folk from injuries ... the town was law-abiding and civil, manners were polished to encourage trade ... hard work at the anvil, honesty & thrift delivered profits ... deception & theft didn't seem to work ... such was the innovative, small workshop, specialised skills, atmosphere in Birmingham ... by 1750 Birmingham was filing 3 times as many patents as any other town or city in the land ...

Inevitably there were riots over 'fair shares' of the spoils ... but it was foolish bite to the hand that feeds you when the alternative is penury back on the land ...  

1740 Brass introduced by the Taylor family drawing supplies from Bristol (1702), Cheadle (1717) & Macclesfield (1758)

1761 Matthew Boulton Soho Manufactory

1765 The Lunar Society brought geologists, chemists, scientists, engineers and theorists together to discuss new inventions and new ideas

1767 Canal to the coal depths of Wednesbury

1776 James Watt & Mathew Boulton and steam engines ...

Derby -

Derby was a key location, as the Derwent river had a fast flow and it was here that it was crossed by the London to Carlisle road. The site was significant as it hosted the first successful silk throwing mill in England, and probably the first fully mechanised factory in the world. Thomas Cotchett's Mill, built in Derby in 1704, was a failure. However in 1716 John Lombe visited the successful silk throwing mill in Piedmont, Italy, and returned to successfully rejuvenate Crochett's Mill. But who was responsible for John Lombe's mysterious death six years later in 1722?

William Hutton wrote about life in the Derby Mill, 'days of play were now drawing to an end. The Silk Mill was proposed. I was accepted. There were three hundred persons employed in the mill, I was the youngest'.

In 1771 the Arkwright partners built the world's first water-powered mill at Cromford.

A note on Scotland -

Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation and Luther & Calvin began to influence Scotland. The most influential figure was theologian John Knox (1510–1572).
Most significant Scots supported William & Mary, but many, particularly in the Highlands, remained sympathetic to James VII.
The Darién mercantilist scheme reflected the view that overseas trade and colonialism was the route to upgrade the economy. It was a disaster confirming the pattern of Civil wars & adventures with decisive English interventions.

By 1707 a union between Scotland and England became economically attractive. The country depended heavily on sales of cattle and linen to England. The promise of the much larger markets of England and the growing British Empire, was irresistible.

In 1750, Scotland was a rural, agricultural economy which was suddenly propelled into the modern, capitalist world through scientific and technological breakthrough. The transformation was led by two cities that grew rapidly. Glasgow, on the river Clyde, was the base for the tobacco and sugar trade with an emerging textile industry. Edinburgh was the administrative and intellectual centre where the Scottish Enlightenment was chiefly based.

The Industrial Revolution was based upon the efficient exploitation of nature’s raw materials and labour as new scientific theories developed by the Enlightenment thinkers were quickly transformed into practical, money making applications.

England’s financial entrepreneurs found the cheaper labour in Scotland attractive and many moved north to make their fortunes.

Transformations in the industry came through a series of English inventions which the Scots were quick to adopt: Hargreave’s Spinning Jenny, Arkwright’s Waterframe and Crompton’s Mule all accelerated the weaving process and improved competitiveness. It was boom time for the few who held the capital.

Water supply powered business and the Falls of Clyde at New Lanark became a centre.

England’s financial entrepreneurs found the cheaper labour in Scotland attractive and many moved north to make their fortunes.

Much of Scotland’s new found wealth rested upon the Atlantic trade, particularly in tobacco, sugar & cotton.

1756 - Joseph Black discovers carbon dioxide, and bleaching powder.

1759 - Carron Ironworks, Falkirk and Newcomen atmospheric steam engine.

1786 - David Dale founds New Lanark Mills and Robert Owen helps out.

During the Scottish Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, Scotland became one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Adam Smith and his mates were the first to explain to the world the moral and economic progress which flowed from the industrial revolution and the Act of Union - 

James Hutton (1726-97), Geologist.
The findings of science, and not tradition, should be the basis of the laws of the universe: that any theory should be established by observation and testing of hypotheses against the evidence.
Limitless time explained how natural forces had shaped the Earth’s surface, not over 6000 years but over millions of years.

David Hume (1711-1776), Philosopher .
A sceptic, a thinker who questioned everything.
Fundamentally driven by our passions, our sentiments, which shaped our reason.

Adam Smith (1723-90), Moral Philosopher.
A free trader, interested in a more efficient economy, and the better society that free trade would create.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne -

When water power was replaced by coal, The Great Northern Coalfield was the biggest producer of coal in the country. However there was a variety of other industries which were established on the banks of Tyne & Wear.
In 1635, Newcastle was described as 'after Bristol & London, the fairest and richest town in England' and at the crossroads for trade, the bridges over the river Tyne at Newcastle, together with its access to the sea and the emergence of coal ensured the city’s supremacy for over 800 years. The City of Newcastle maintained its effective monopoly on the coal trade right up until the mid-nineteenth century.
During the industrial revolution the two rivers were used for transportation, which delivered the rapid growth of the two regions. Tyne & Wear were to first inherit their industrial fortune by wool and then later coal & steel industry played their major role by making Newcastle the biggest shipbuilding region in the world.

 

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