Birmingham

Birmingham. The rise of Birmingham from local to national importance was largely an 18th-cent. development, when improvements in turnpike roads and canals enabled it to turn to advantage its central situation. The name indicates the ham or settlement of the people of Beorma, presumably a Saxon leader, and at the time of Domesday Book (1086) it was no more than a tiny hamlet, with five villeins and four smallholders. It grew during the Middle Ages, acquiring a market, but was overshadowed politically by Warwick and Coventry. Birmingham's reputation for cutlery began early, for in the 1530s Leland found it ‘a good market town’, with one long street by the brook: ‘there be many smiths in the town that use to make knives and all manner of cutting tools,’ exploiting the local coal and iron. Camden, 40 years later, was more enthusiastic—it was ‘swarming with inhabitants and echoing with the noise of anvils’: the upper part of the town had ‘an abundance of handsome buildings’. During the civil wars, Birmingham declared for the Parliament, which must have found its guns, pikes, and swords of great value: Clarendon, on the king's side, accused it of ‘hearty, wilful, disloyalty’. Being near the front line of each side, it was repeatedly harassed but suffered no permanent damage. By 1700 it had well over 10,000 inhabitants. It still had no parliamentary representation and no corporation, which cynics thought a great advantage, since it allowed the people to shun politics and concentrate on business. But by 1830 the Birmingham Political Union had taken the lead in pressing for reform and the town acquired two MPs in 1832 and a council in 1838. Under the mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain in the 1870s Birmingham became celebrated for municipal enterprise, and Mason's College, founded in 1870, received a charter as a university in 1900. Birmingham's economy diversified, with Cadbury's established at Bournville in 1879, General Electric in 1896, the Dunlop Rubber Company at Castle Bromwich in the 1890s, and the Austin Motor Company in 1905. The development of the railway system in the 19th cent. and the motorway network in the 20th helped Birmingham to continue to exploit its geographical position, and during the Edwardian period it overtook Liverpool and Manchester as the second city in England and Wales.

J. A. Cannon