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Newcastle's long nineteenth century: a world-historical interpretation of making a multi-nodal city region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2014

MICHAEL BARKE  and
PETER J. TAYLOR
MICHAEL BARKE
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
PETER J. TAYLOR
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK
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Abstract

We describe and analyse how Newcastle was transformed from a relatively stagnant British city at the dawn of the nineteenth century to one of the most vibrant cities in the world by the early twentieth century. We use two frameworks to chart and explain this momentous change: Wallerstein's model of hegemonic cycles to locate Newcastle's late development in a world-historical context, and Jacobs’ theory of city economic growth to understand the processes of change within the city and its region. These lead to an empirical focus on three investigations: first, how Newcastle grew geographically to become a multi-nodal city region (Tyneside plus Wearside); second, how the Newcastle city economy grew and developed into a very complex division of labour; and third, how this generated a new modern metropolitan cultural world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 43 - 69
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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65 Significantly, Bainbridge's of Newcastle has been claimed to be one of the first department stores with innovations such as labelled fixed prices and allowing shoppers to walk around without any obligation to buy. The firm also diversified into manufacturing its own brands of clothing and shoes (on several different sites) in the 1880s. See Adburgham, A., Shops and Shopping, 1800–1914 (London, 1964), 138–40Google Scholar.

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68 Here is an example of an entrepreneur starting a career in old work and shifting to a very different new work. Born in Newcastle in 1863, Lionel Clapman is a founder member of the Tyneside Geographical Society in 1887 and is described as a ‘Quayside business man’ confirmed in the 1891 census as a ‘coal exporter’. His firm goes bankrupt in 1896 and the following year he appears as the UK secretary of Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian polar explorer. However, in the 1901 census he appears as a ‘seed and bulb merchant’ and in 1911 as ‘managing director of limited company of seed and bulb merchants’, clearly becoming a successful businessman responding to new and growing demands from city gardening activities (just one ‘seed merchant’ is recorded in the 1883 Directory). After living most of his life in Newcastle, he dies at the suburban coast (Whitley Bay) in 1916.

69 More generally, Ellis, ‘A dynamic society’, 217–20, provides a detailed analysis of the town's occupational structure through the eighteenth century and the division of labour is shown to be relatively stable. Most of the occupational categories identified show some fluctuations but with no significant trends although numbers of ‘merchants’ do decline whilst ‘pitmen’ and, to a lesser degree, ‘smiths’ increase. This, of course, is exactly what one would expect of the ‘Black Indies’ economy.

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