1/ Few tweets on Birmingham & Black Country economic history. This stuff is quite obscure - even less well known than in many other cities - and a lot of urban policy types don't really worry about it. But it's crucial to understanding the area's modern predicament.
2/ Birmingham and the towns to the north and west of it that became known in the 19th C as the "Black Country" owe their existence to the thickest, most extensive seam of coal and iron ore deposits in Europe, in combination with plentiful wood for charcoal in Arden to the south.
3/ This coal and iron ore seam in South Staffordshire and North Warwickshire was very close to the surface and easily obtained without extensive mining.
4/ Even in medieval times, the area was known for iron, but the civil war may have been the reason why the area took over from the Kent and Sussex Weald as the main location for production. Birmingham forged weapons for the Parliamentarians; the Black Country for Royalists.
5/ In 1709 the Birmingham ironmaster Abraham Darby I built the world's first blast furnace at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where he successfully smelted iron ore with coke. This allowed cast iron to be produced at a far greater volume and scale.
6/ Together with rapidly expanding markets, both in Europe and the New World, this began to transform the area. The towns of the Black Country began to specialise in particular trades - chain making, nails, and so on - in extractive and primary industries.
7/ In contrast, Birmingham, being closer to the main market of London and the southern ports, specialised in fine, delicate metalwork - "toys". This did not have the modern meaning, but referred to small, ornate goods - buckles, snuffboxes, pen nibs, and so on.
8/ During the late 18th century, Birmingham saw a rate of growth unprecedented in modern history. By 1780, it was the largest city in England after London and Bristol.
It gains a classically planned georgian new town on the hill above the old town in Digbeth. This is now the Colmore Business District and the eastern side of the Jewellery Quarter.
9/ with some exceptions, industry remained small scale, but a new class of artisan-proprietors were created. They formed the first ever Building Society, Freeth's, at a local coffee house.
10/ One of the larger concerns was John Taylor's button factory at Dale End, which employed 500 people In the mid 1700s- possibly the largest production unit in the country at the time.
11/ In 1765 he teamed up with the ironmaster Sampson Lloyd to create a new bank, Taylor & Lloyds, that would cater for the needs of the town's fast growing industries. This became Lloyd's Bank.
9/ with some exceptions, industry remained small scale, but a new class of artisan-proprietors were created. They formed the first ever Building Society, Freeth's, at a local coffee house.
10/ One of the larger concerns was John Taylor's button factory at Dale End, which employed 500 people In the mid 1700s- possibly the largest production unit in the country at the time.
11/ In 1765 he teamed up with the ironmaster Sampson Lloyd to create a new bank, Taylor & Lloyds, that would cater for the needs of the town's fast growing industries. This became Lloyd's Bank.
12/ The accuracy and ability of the town's metalworkers attracted a class of indutrialist-experimenters keen to turn their ideas into reality.
13/ In Joel Mokyr's history of the industrial revolution, he calls these 'savants'. They channeled the pan-European discoveries in science into British industry.
14/ Birmingham had no guilds, and was exempt from the acts which prevented nonconformists from see settling in cities. With no science studied at Oxford and Cambridge, this was the milieu through which knowledge became practical.
15/ The most famous of these was the Lunar Society. More later, time for the day job.
I am afraid 9/ is slightly wrong. The first building society was Ketley's. Freeths was a famous coffee house at the time. My bad....
Unsent tweet: 7.5/ Although the first canal was built in Manchester, the subsequent "boom" was focussed on Birmingham, which became the centre and most extensive part of the network This provided a further boost for the area, which had previously been held back by its isolation
16/ The Lunar Society was not a formal club but included some of the greatest thinkers of its time - Erasmus Darwin (Charles' grandfather), and Joseph Priestley, for example - alongside industrialists such as James Keir and the potter Josiah Wedgwood.
17 / In Birmingham, Keir would develop a method for large-scale alkali production. Alongside the invention of new processes for Sulphuric Acid production by John Roebuck during his time in the city, this would mark the start of the chemical industry.
18/ It is no coincidence that many of these men were Scottish, specifically graduates of Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, where, unlike in England, science was studied. The Midlands offered a milieu of scientists, precision trades, and "interested" entrepreneurs.
19/ Two other examples were the engineers James Watt and William Murdoch. Watt's association with the local entrepreneur Matthew Boulton was the most successful of all these partnerships.
20/ Boulton had set up the "Soho Manufactory" north of Birmingham in 1766 which pioneered the idea of an assembly line. His nearby house, today a museum, was the first to use Central Heating since Roman times.
21/ Watt used the expertise of Boulton's workforce to produce the first commercially viable steam engine. This would be used for minting coins as well as, increasingly, in the the Lancashire cotton industry, which was beginning to boom.
22/ Commercial production would have to wait until Watt and Boulton's sons would go on to run the Soho Foundry in 1795. The world's first engineering factory,this was dedicated to the new steam technology.
23/ The Foundry was run along management principles that would prefigure twentieth century Taylorism. It also pioneered sickness insurance schemes for its workers.
24/ William Murdoch, Watt's close associate, would also develop gas lighting. Without gas lighting, the operation of the vast mills that would transform the Lancashire cotton industry would have been problematic.
25/ This period of Birmingham innovation was curtailed by two events. Firstly, the "Priestley riots" - the Lunar Society members' support for the French Revolution made them the targets for a Tory-inspired mob. Many were driven out of the town.
26/ Secondly, the Napoleonic Wars cut off West Midlands industry from its major markets, but also cut off its thinkers from the "Republic of Letters", their correspondents in France and Germany who had helped them with their innovations.
27/ Meanwhile, although the first roller spinning and water frame devices appear to have been invented in the Birmingham area, the cotton industry was taking off in Manchester and Lancashire.
28/ Several macro-innovations, and emergence of huge (by the standards of the time) industrial units drove huge productivity gains in the cotton industry, which for many people is the defining phenomenon of the industrial revolution.
29/ Birmingham industry, highly skilled, specialised and workshop-based, saw no such massive productivity gains - although there some macro-innovations in the iron industry in the Black Country, which lowered input costs.
30/ But the pattern had been set. Birmingham had developed an almost colonial relationship with the Black Country. The latter specialised in primary industry; the former in adding value through specialism and micro-innovation.
31/ The industries of the Black Country were more specialist, larger and employed more unskilled workers. Birmingham had more entrepreneurship and social mobility, with many small-scale owners of workshops of a handful of people (who would often go on to run their own businesses)
32/ This created a real divide between the two areas, despite their geographic proximity. The situation was quite different in Manchester. It became the business capital of "a whole constellation" of cotton towns with similar temperament and social structures.
33/ Birmingham was important in ensuring the Great Reform Bill was passed, following huge public demonstrations on Newhall Hill. This enfranchised a large number of men of "the middling sort", of which there were many in Brum.
34/ John Bright, one of the great proponents of free trade, was unable to get elected in his native Manchester - too few electors of the right persuasion. He eventually became MP for Birmingham.
35/ "The social and political state of [Birmingham] is far more healthy than that of Manchester. There is a freer intercourse between all classes than in the Lancashire town, where a great and impassable gulf separates the workman from the employer ..."
36/ "r ... the industry of the hardware districts is carried on by small manufacturers, employing a few men and boys each, sometimes only an apprentice or two, whilst the great capitalists in Manchester form an aristocracy." - Richard Cobden, his speech on Bright's election
37/ But having "great capitalists" in what was then Britain's leading export industry (by far) was no bad thing for the interests of the city. Manchester's industrialists had the ear of Government. Birmingham's more modest leaders did not (to the same extent).
38/ Back to Brum. It moved down the urban hierarchy during the early 19thC as Liverpool, Manc and Glasgow overtook it in size. It did go on inventing - a good example being Parkesene, the first plastic, which is pretty much celluloid (and bakelite). Without it, no film industry.
39/ And there were still dominant industries. Birmingham was producing most of the world's pen nibs and guns, for example - at opposite ends of the morality scale.
40/ Its prowess in metalworking, though, made it the focus for the second wave of industrialisation - in engineering and electricals. By the early 20th century, Birmingham was at the forefront of these emerging industries.
And more on that tomorrow.
41/ An early area for engineering expertise is the bicycle. Indeed, the modern bike is very much a creation of the West Midlands. Lucas Industries, which became one of the defining Birmingham companies, made acetylene lamps for bikes (and ships). "The King of the Road". 
42/ Other examples include Dunlop, which began as a manufacturer of bicycle tyres, and Reynolds Tubing, which created the steel tubing which became the mainstay of bike frames.
43/ It was only a short hop from there to automotive engineering. In the 1890s century the polymath and experimenter Frederick Lanchester moved to the city, eventually setting up the Lanchester Engine Company in Sparkbrook. He invents the accelerator pedal and fuel injection
44/ But it was Herbert Austin, an employee of Wolseley (sheep shearing equipment) who would build the first 4-wheel British motor car. Wolseley, as with most others, targeted the luxury market (European royalty etc). The Wolseley restaurant on Piccadilly was its showroom.
45/ In 1905 Austin resigned from Wolseley and set up by himself. The company he created would dominate the British market for decades. Its killer product was the Austin 7, which was licensed and copied all over the world. The first BMW, the Dixi, was a licensed Austin 7.
46/ This focus on automotive ignores the diversity of engineering and electrical activities in Birmingham at this time. Workshops were vanishing and were being replaced by larger concerns - Lucas Industries, BSA, the ancestors of GKN, and so on.
47/ This agglomeration brought with it a new breed of owners, with the ability and inclination to lead in politics. Men such as Joseph Chamberlain - and others, such as the Nettlefolds, the Cadburys and so on - were all nonconformist by religion and liberal in politics.
48/ These families all lived in Edgbaston, only a mile or so from the city centre. Exposed to the city's social problems, the suburb became a place of ideas and discussion - about how to beautify and improve the city.
49/ Birmingham became the focus for a wave of improvement, from gas and water to new streets and garden suburbs. It would produce the first municipal university, the first municipal orchestra, the first municipal art school and would be a major proponent of universal schooling.
50/ It was seen as a model for city governance - the best run city in the world. But this was not just about making lives better for workers, whatever Cadbury may have done at Bournville.
51/ One of Birmingham's other major industries was weaponry. It had grown rich in providing guns for the Empire. The Boer War had been a major boost, which partly explains Chamberlain's ardent imperialism.
52/ But the Boer War had also shown how unhealthy and underfed conscripted Britons were, compared to healthy Boers. Town improvements were also about improving the "stock" and getting them away from unhealthy cities.
53/ The Boer War also had undertones of British-German rivalry. The German economy was beginning to boom, and was becoming threatening. British industry no longer dominated the world.
54/ It was cities, rather than the conditions of cities, that were blamed. This partly leads to the Garden City movement, but in Birmingham's case provides an impetus for getting the population out into healthy new areas. This would be a driving force for planning for years.
55/ Birmingham's population was booming, too. By the early 20th century it had overtaken Manchester and Liverpool to become the second largest city in England. It was becoming as prosperous as the South.
56/ The First World War was another boost for the city. It was renowned in English-speaking countries as "the arsenal of democracy", such was its contribution in equipment terms.
57/ By this time the industries of the North have begun to collapse. Most obviously in the North East (Jarrow March etc.) but the cotton industry is beginning to fail.
58/ The 1930s is a terrible time for the North of England, but also one that formed a strong sense of identity and separateness. But Birmingham is booming. It was clearly part of the prosperous southern half of the country.
59/ The most obvious legacy of this is the huge belt of 1930s suburbia - semi-detached and detached - around Birmingham, often with very generous gardens. This is quite different to the Northern cities and has more in common with e.g. suburban Surrey and Kent.
60/ Together with earlier garden suburb movement, this explains the city's dispersed and low density nature compared with its northern rivals.
61/ Although that is intensified by huge post war inner city clearances. My maternal grandparents grew up on Irving Street, behind the mailbox. This is how it was in the 60s, before being swept away like so many others like it.
62/ Despite all this affluence, Birmingham failed to emerge as a proper regional capital, as Manchester, despite its failing industries, still was.
64/ Unlike the textile conurbations of the North, the economy of Birmingham had moved in different cycles to the Black Country.
62/ Despite all this affluence, Birmingham failed to emerge as a proper regional capital, as Manchester, despite its failing industries, still was.
63/ Which brings us back to the Black Country. The situation was not as bad as further north, but it did not share Birmingham's wealth and urban improvements.
64/ Unlike the textile conurbations of the North, the economy of Birmingham had moved in different cycles to the Black Country. By the mid 20th C, this has become a huge gap, referred to in parliamentary debates. The Black Country could not see Birmingham's interests as its own.
65/ This held back Birmingham's national voice but also the development of the services side of the economy, which bring us onto post-war (later...)
There's certainly an important contribution. But until the late 20th C the Irish community in Birmingham was a lot smaller than Manchester or Liverpool. I don't know about the Black Country.
Sorry, I meant second half of the twentieth century.
66/ Birmingham emerges from the war heavily bombed but with no major buildings destroyed. Its industries revert to peacetime production. During the 1950s and 60s wages in Birmingham (and Coventry) were as high as in London - the West Midlands is an "affluent region"
67/ The Government was then, as now, concerned with struggling parts of the North. From 1945 onwards it introduced Distribution of Industry Acts which prevented industrial businesses from setting up or expanding in London and Birmingham. Companies were encouraged to relocate.
68/ The motor industry thrives for the first decade after the war - Britain is the leading exporter, particularly to the US. The combination of this and the acts make the area increasingly dependent on a single industry. It is moving away from being "the city of a 1000 trades".
69/ By the late 60s the industry is beginning to struggle, challenged by innovative competitors from overseas. By the 70s, it has become terminal, plagued by union problems and poor management, and it is almost completely nationalised.
70/ The final blow for the industry is the strong pound in the 80s. That period is seen as being a hard one for the North but in fact the region seeing the highest job losses is the West Midlands. In a few years it goes from being the richest region outside SE to the poorest.
71/ Services had grown strongly over the post-war period, particularly in banking and insurance. In 1971 the BBC opened the largest production facility outside London at Pebble Mill in Birmingham; ATV's Aston studios became the centre for light entertainment output.
72/ Pebble Mill, on the other hand, alongside staple family favourites, was a major centre for drama production, including many of the controversial "Plays for Today".
73/ This was not enough to compensate, of course. The main problem was the large-scale redevelopment of the city centre and inner suburbs, in which many Victorian buildings were demolished. It was intended to make Birmingham fit for the future....
74/ But completely failed. The main problem was the inner ring road, the "concrete collar", raised and drawn too tightly around a very constrained centre. It made it unfriendly for pedestrians, prevented the CBD from growing and cut off the centre from the inner suburbs.
75/ This may have briefly looked modern in the 1960s, but by the 80s it looked terrible and was not the sort of environment that would attract the new breed of service industries.
76/ After several decades in the doldrums, Birmingham's economy has finally shown some signs of revival. Much of the change can be dated back to the late 80s Highbury Initiative which recognised the city centre's physical problems and tried to address them.
77/ The renaissance of other regional cities obscures how much of an achievement this was, and how it predated similar initiatives elsewhere. Ringroads were lowered, conference centres were opened, canalsides revitalised and new pedestrian squares and routes were provided.
78/ I hope this history helps to explain some of Birmingham's issues and its unique character. I am sure it wouldn't meet academic standards, but it's all done from memory and this is Twitter after all.
79/ I hope that some of those people who dismiss Brum as being famous for nothing more than "sheet metal, heavy metal and the balti" in newspaper columns or comment sections will one day realise quite how important it has been in shaping modern Britain and the modern world. /END
