The Industrial Revolution and the Regional Geography of England

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widespread belief, shared by geographers and historians, that industrial- ization destroyed regional distinctiveness in England as elsewhere. After an outline of the complex regional structure of pre-industrial England, it is demonstrated that all kinds of social movements and political pressure groups were regionally fragmented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that distinctive social and cultural traits began to be recognized as characteristic of particular regions, and that people began consciously to identify themselves with the regions in which they lived. This develop- ment of regionalism in England was dependent upon the essentially regional structure of the early industrial economy which, in turn, was related to the importance of waterway transport and the sparseness and fragmentation of the canal network.