Liverpool

Liverpool, created a borough by royal will (1207) as a convenient place of embarkation for Irish campaigns, fluctuated in prosperity until the early 17th cent. when Irish industries developed and Chester declined. Of protestant temper, its value as a point of contact between Ireland and the northern royalists accounted for its importance in the Civil War, being twice besieged. Continuing to control the larger share of the Irish trade, Liverpool gained impetus from profitable commerce with the plantations (sugar, tobacco, cotton) and the rapid development of Manchester's textile industries. Both legitimate and illegitimate trade with the West Indies and South America enabled gain at the expense of Bristol and London, and led traders into the even more lucrative African traffic. Involvement in the slave trade brought riches and an unsavoury reputation, but the money improved transport and communication with productive Lancashire industries. When trade with the East Indies and Spanish America was thrown open and the American midwest began to expand, Liverpool's dominance of Atlantic trade and as an emigration port produced a cosmopolitan but overcrowded, unhealthy, politically corrupt, and turbulent city. Systematic attempts to reconstruct led to generally steady improvement, growth being accompanied by high levels of immigration (especially from Ireland), and continued establishment of new local industries. Despite extensive reconstruction of the business quarters after severe bomb damage in the Second World War, the subsequent de-industrialization of Liverpool has led to its being better known for its football teams, music groups, and comedians, yet it still exerts economic and cultural dominance over the surrounding metropolitan region.

A. S. Hargreaves