Geographical Aspects of the Industrial Evolution of London Till 1850

Abstract

THE industrial development of a metropolis is little susceptible of geo? graphical interpretation. In the past, geographers have been much prone to ignore the history of industrial development, and the purely economic factors which are involved in the siting of an industry, and have tended to place too much faith in rather lame 'explanations' based entirely on physical circumstances.1 If this be true in the industrial North of England, where geographical localizing factors were of vital significance, it is difficult to arrive at a just estimate of the industrial role of geography in a great urban agglomeration whose primary raison d'etre was commercial and political. External relations provide the site values, together with the initial impulse to the urban aggregate, and as the economic attraction of a great consuming centre makes itself felt, it in turn brings into existence new groups of industries with their new groups of consumers. Nevertheless, while the outstanding geographical fact is the huge concentration of demand, are even within the limits of London and its environs some factors of internal geography which are significant for the siting of certain industries, while a sketch of the occupational topography of the city displays also some interesting associations of trades with each other and with particular localities. The period of the Industrial Revolution was naturally critical for London's place in the economy of the country. After extra-metropolitan competition began in earnest, the time during which London's advantages of marketing were not outweighed either by legal restrictions, such as the Spitalfields Acts, or by Weber's deglommerative factors, such as high rents, was relatively short. In any case, her capital interests were commercial rather than industrial. Quite apart from the old-established clothing areas in the south of England, which were themselves in decay, the movement away from London (of textiles, for example) was already in evidence before the exploitation of new power resources and the rise of the factory system in the North rendered inevitable the decline of the Spitalfields weavers. Thus after 1730 the framework knitting industry gradually migrated to Nottinghamshire; while in 1833 there is little cutlery made in London . . . it is not unusual for the word 'London' to be stamped on many articles made in Sheffield, as London still retained the prestige of making the very finest wares.2 But if the North had its industrial, London had its financial revolu? tion, and while its proportion of the country's manufacturing industry declined, it remained the entrepdt par excellence, and became the money centre of the world.