Trade and The Industrial Revolution
By the 16th century, the city's trades and craftsmen had begun to wield significant influence and the city had become an important trading centre with the Clyde providing access to the city and the rest of Scotland for merchant shipping. The access to the Atlantic Ocean allowed the importation of goods such as American tobacco and cotton, and Caribbean sugar, which were then traded throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.
The de-silting of the Clyde in the 1770s allowed bigger ships to move further up the river, thus laying the foundations for industry and shipbuilding in Glasgow during the 19th century.
The abundance of coal and iron in Lanarkshire led to Glasgow becoming an industrial city. It became known as "the Second City of the Empire". Cotton factories and textile mills became large employers in Glasgow and the local region.
Trading allowed great wealth to be generated for some in the city. Tobacco in the American Colonies became such a significant trade, that Tobacco Lords developed, adopting the lifestyle of aristocrats, and lavishing vast sums on great houses and splendid churches of Glasgow. The merchants constructed spectacular buildings and monuments that can still be seen today, and reinvested their money in industrial development to help Glasgow grow further. In 1893 the burgh was constituted as the County of the City of Glasgow. Glasgow became one of the richest cities in the world, and a municipal public transport system, parks, museums and libraries were all opened during this period.
As the city's wealth increased, its centre expanded westwards as the lush Victorian architecture of what is now known as the Merchant City area began to spring up. New public buildings such as the City Chambers on George Square, Trades Hall on Glassford Street, and the Mitchell Library in Charing Cross epitomised the wealth and riches of Glasgow in the late 19th century with their lavishly decorated interiors and intricately carved stonework. As this new development took place, the focus of Glasgow's central area moved away from its medieval origins at High Street, Trongate, Saltmarket and Rottenrow, and these areas fell into partial dereliction, something which is in places still evident to the present day.
Read more about this topic: History Of Glasgow
Famous quotes containing the words trade, industrial and/or revolution:
“Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever—whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman—a boy did not amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge.”
—Philippe Ariés (20th century)
“The Enormous Room seems to me to be the book that has nearest approached the mood of reckless adventure in which men will reach the white heat of imagination needed to fuse the soggy disjointed complexity of the industrial life about us into seething fluid of creation. There can be no more playing safe.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)