History of Manchester

The history of Manchester encompasses its change from a minor Lancastrian township into the pre-eminent industrial metropolis of the United Kingdom and the world. Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The transformation took little more than a century.

Evolving from a Roman castrum in Celtic Britain, Manchester was the site of the world's first passenger railway station and many scientific achievements of great importance. Manchester also led the political and economic reform of 19th-century Britain as the vanguard of free trade. The mid-20th century saw a decline in Manchester's industrial importance, prompting a depression in social and economic conditions. Subsequent investment, gentrification, and rebranding from the 1990s onwards changed its fortunes, and reinvigorated Manchester as a post-industrial city with multiple sporting, broadcasting, and educational institutions.

Read more about History Of Manchester:  Etymology, Prehistory, Roman, Post-Roman, Medieval, Growth of The Textile Trade, Industrial Revolution, Transport, Population, Intellectual Life, Reform, Industrial and Cultural Growth, Further Expansion, Twentieth Century, Around and After 2000, Civic History, Greater Manchester

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