Manchester, United Kingdom

After the Roman withdrawal and subsequent Anglo-Saxon settlement, the centre of the town moved to the confluence of the rivers Irwell and Irk. In the Normans' Harrying of the North, much of the area surrounding Manchester was laid waste. The Domesday Book (1086) records Manchester within the hundred of Salford and held as tenant in chief by a Norman named Roger of Poitou. The town was later held by the Grelley family, who were the lords of the manor and residents of Manchester Castle. By 1421, Thomas de la Warre had founded a collegiate church for the parish, which would later become Manchester Cathedral; other church buildings have since become Chetham's School of Music and Chetham's Library. The latter opened in 1653 and remains open to the public, the oldest free public reference library in the UK.

Manchester is recorded as a market in 1282. Around the 14th century, Manchester received an influx of Flemish weavers, which has sometimes been credited as the foundation of the region's textile industry. The town became an important centre for the manufacture and trade of woollens and linen, and by 1540 had expanded to become, in the words of John Leland, "the fairest, best builded, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire". The cathedral and Chetham's buildings are the only prominent survivors from that period.

During the English Civil War, Manchester strongly favoured the Parliamentarians who were led by Oliver Cromwell. He gave the town the right to elect its Member of Parliament; Charles Worsley was so elected and appointed as Major-General for Lancashire, Cheshire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major-Generals. A diligent puritan, he shut down ale houses in the town and banned the celebration of Christmas.

Large quantities of cotton were used after about 1600, firstly in linen and cotton fustians; by around 1750, pure cotton fabrics were produced and cotton had overtaken wool in importance. The Irwell and Mersey were made navigable by 1736, opening a route from Manchester to the sea docks on the Mersey. The Bridgewater Canal, Britain's first wholly artificial waterway, opened in 1761, bringing coal from mines at Worsley to central Manchester. The canal was extended to the Mersey by 1776. The combination of competition and improved efficiency halved the cost of coal and the transport cost of raw cotton. Manchester became the dominant marketplace for textiles produced in the surrounding towns. A commodities exchange, opened in 1729, and numerous large warehouses aided commerce. In 1780, Richard Arkwright began construction of Manchester's first cotton mill. Manchester exported its cotton goods to Africa as a way of paying for slaves to be purchased for the transatlantic slave trade; this supply line to Africa and its reliance on the British Empire supported Manchester's population and economic growth.

Manchester was one of the centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The majority of cotton spinning took place in the towns of south Lancashire and north Cheshire, and Manchester was for a time the most productive centre of cotton processing. This caused the rapid expansion of the town that would lead to it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester also became known as the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods; it was dubbed "Cottonopolis" and "Warehouse City" during the Victorian era. Brought on by the Industrial Revolution, there was rapid, unplanned urban expansion of Manchester at the turn of the 19th century. Engineering firms made machines for the cotton trade, then diversified into general manufacture. The chemical industry started by producing bleaches and dyes, but expanded into other areas. Commerce was supported by financial service industries such as banking and insurance. In 1803, John Dalton formulated his atomic theory while teaching in the city.

Manchester was the scene of bread and labour riots, as well as calls for greater political recognition by the city's working class. On 16 August 1819, large crowds protested in St Peter's Square, Manchester; estimates of the crowd range between 30,000–150,000 contemporaneously and 50,000–80,000 by modern critics. When ordered to disperse the peaceful crowd, the soldiers charged them on horseback, killing at least 18 and injuring more than 700 in the Peterloo Massacre.

The political landscape of early industrial Manchester contained capitalist and communist schools of thought. The city was the home of Manchester Liberalism, and the centre of the Anti-Corn Law League after 1838. The city is the subject of Friedrich Engels's work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, as Engels spent much of his life in and around Manchester and met with Karl Marx at Chetham's Library. The first Trades Union Congress was held at the Mechanics' Institute, Manchester in 1868 and Manchester was an important centre of the Labour Party, the Suffragette Movement, and the Chartist Movement.