Talk:Cottonopolis

Context

Did Cottonopolis soley refer to Manchester, or did it include its satelite towns (Oldham and such)?

From who and when can this name be traced to? Jhamez84 23:54, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

POV

Right from the first reference, which takes Williams and Farnie out of context- I find a POV slant. The term refered to the Manchester the commercial capital, in 1854 the manufacturing function of the city was on the decline from 1853 , it was that it was the controlling hub of cotton- that placed it head and shoulders above any city worldwide. I also think that the term had a very narrow time frame- by 1872 it had been demoted to Yarndale which is derogatory. (And I am still on p20 of Williams and Farnie). This said all the references need to be double checked and at the same time a lot of fluff could be removed. It seems every one who attempts a cotton article feels the need to write more about the inventions of the 1750s than the topic in hand. Thatś my POV.--ClemRutter (talk) 21:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I think I added the "first reference" you are talking about, here. You'll have to expand on the "which takes Williams and Farnie out of context" bit. Mr Stephen (talk) 23:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

The city's commercial function rather than its industrial production that earned it the designation of Cottonborough in 1851 of Cottonopolis in 1854... while the lead talks about cotton production and cotton, not the centre of trading and red in tooth and claw capitalism. I think that the term Cottonopolis was a reflection of one strand of Victorian thought, and it re adoption with pride in recent generation was also a reflection of another strand of thought and this needs to be documented- and it is not a synonym for the History of Victorian Manchester.

I may be too critical here- and it is great to find someone that cares! I do hate leads that don't reflect the article- and articles that write about all and everything other than the subject they are purported to cover.

At the moment I am working up a improvement to the Cotton Mill in my sand box- and when it is ready it will need to be subjected to some high quality editing. As an aside- I am experimenting with this flowchart system- and I have posted a draft at Cotton processing flowchart which you may like to comment on.--ClemRutter (talk) 16:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Merge

Should this be merged and redirected to Manchester? RJFJR (talk) 18:07, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think so, although the article does confuse the two, so I understand why your suggestion seems to be sensible. Cottonopolis includes Manchester's outlying towns, like Oldham. IIRC, there was relatively little cotton manufacture in Manchester itself, which is a surprisingly small area. The article does need a lot of work though ... Malleus Fatuorum 18:27, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Alternatively, ClemRutter may well be correct in his suggestion above, that it was a term given to Manchester for a specific period of its history, when it was the world centre of the cotton trade, I haven't checked the sources. But even if so, there's more to be said about that period of Manchester's history than couyld be rolled into the Manchester article. Malleus Fatuorum 18:33, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Despite work needed on it, surely it justifies its status as a self-standing article for the following reasons:

• The main Manchester article is already very large and has many subsections
• Names for other cities have their own self-standing article for example Lutecia, Black Country,
• As someone above correctly says Cottonopolis probably referred to a slightly wider than the present Manchester City but was not as extensive as Greater Manchester currently is

therefore all things considered I think it makes sense to leave it as a self-standing article, - with some tidying up obviously :-) --Mapmark (talk) 10:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Origins of the sobriquet: Cottonopolis:start of a rewrite

Having started this thread on Talk:Manchester- I am copying it over her as a prelude to doing a rewrite. As I have stated many times I am unhappy with the present content- it is neither fish, flesh or fowl, and contains no meat. I am intending to change the article to concentrate on the title not to give a distorted potted history of Manchester. We have established that the sobiquet had been used, usually derogatively since 1851, so it does deserve an article. Watch this space.

//Thread

It is stated all over the web that Manchester was commonly called Cottonpolis. Where is the evidence? McNeil and Nevell (2000) p7 confidently state that Manchester is called Cottonopolis, but don't cite a source, and having done a bit of writing it seems like what you do when you have a blank piece of paper in front of you and a large task ahead, and something that shouls have been challenged on the first copyedit. Websters on line- comes up with

• "His friends thought he would have preferred the busy life of Cottonopolis to the out-of-way county of Cornwall."- Newspaper paragraph, January, 1886. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
• Other web references make a circular link back here
• Spinning the web- happily uses the term- but I cant find any references there

Personal experience- starting in 1951- suggests it is a fiction. I had a mother who was proudly Mancunian, and worked in the city at the head offices of the LCC- she would talk of life in the city in the 1930s- but never did she use the word. A grandfather whose profession was described as a Cotton warehouseman on his marriage certificate. A nonworking grandmother from Ashton-upon-Mersey, who talked about the days before she had made the mistake of buying the house on the wrong side of the railway in Heaton Chapel. Never once did they use Cottonopolis- it wasn't a concept. Where did it come from. We do need a notable source.What have I missed--ClemRutter (talk) 10:00, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I just checked the OED for 'Cottonopolis', and it has citations that go back as far as 1851. Matthew (talk) 21:25, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

A double thanks for the source, and inspiring me to rejoin Mancheser Public Libraries where my membership lapsed in 1981.

I looked at the three references and remain unconvinced that they provide the evidence needed.

We have:

• 1851 E. L. Blanchard Diary 9 Aug. in Scott & Howard Life E.L.B. (1891) I. 74 Still in the ‘Cottonopolis’.

• • 1886 B. Quaritch Catal. of MSS. 3503 It‥deserves to be printed in Manchester‥as a memorial of the departed worthy who was one of the glories of Cottonopolis.
  • 1937 W. S. Churchill Great Contemp. 95 Cottonopolis was fixed in Lancashire.

In each the sobriquet could apply to any metropolis where cotton was traded.

And to that we can add

• Kendall (1900) The Origins and History of the Primitive Methodist Church [1]- who uses the term once describing a myth of a one legged preacher who would walk 36 miles each Sunday to preach in Manchester.

Do we have anything that is more substantial? --ClemRutter (talk) 00:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that if it was used it was probably in the Victorian era. A word search of the old newspapers at the British Library here would settle it but unfortunately I don't have access anymore since my contract ran out at Salford University. If you have a library card you could try The Times archive. And what about this book printed in 1922 and Cottonopolis by William Gaskell 1852? Richerman (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Google books has a lot of references including

"COTTONOPOLIS. BY REV. JAMES LUMSDEN. Though historic records of Manchester date as far back as AD 70, ... The name Cottonopolis (familiar sobriquet for Manchester) plainly indicates the staple article of manufacture and trade. ..." from The Methodist Magazine Vol 34 1891 Richerman (talk) 02:24, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the digging.- so now we have it used by the Unitarians, the Methodists and Primitive Methodists - the plot thickens, was it then merely a part of protestant rhetoric- was it common but to a limited audience and invisible to most? It seems to be used purely in a critical sense- never used to express any pride in the achievements of the city- or indeed the achievements of the great Mancunian Unitarian mill owners who produced the wealth.

(I am going to be be offline most of next week so may have to put this one on hold for a while.)--ClemRutter (talk) 11:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I have an everyday source of the comment. It appears in "The Pride Of Manchester" (the history of the Manchester derby by Steve Cawley & Gary James published in 1991, ISBN 978-0951486214). On page 27 it quoted the Athletic News from September 1898 (reporting on the 10/09/1898 derby match): "...should provide a fine opening for the two socker (sic) clubs of Cottonopolis, and I think...." The phrase/expression was frequently used in the sporting press of the Victorian era.BillyMeredithShorts (talk) 16:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

And if you want a modern source in Jewish welfare in Hamburg and Manchester, c. 1850-1914 By Rainer Liedtke (1998) on page 22 it says "its importance in the cotton trade, unrivalled through the 19th century, earned Manchester the sobriquet 'Cottonopolis'. Richerman (talk) 23:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

//thread

Somewhere out there it says (broad brush) Lancashire is Cotonia and Manchester is Cottonopollis, which I think was the source. Now, where is it ...? Mr Stephen (talk) 23:31, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

... Manchester, and not only Cottonopolis but the whole region of Cottonia ... Times August 19 1864. That wasn't it. Mr Stephen (talk) 23:45, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Somewhere along the lines....

This article has lost focus, there is too much weight gived to manufacturing and not enough about trade and commerce. I have copyedited a bit as it was rather rambling and unclear. The popular culture section deals with dark satanic mills not (in my opinion) trade and commerce and fortunes made and lost.--J3Mrs (talk) 11:21, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

It was always a moving target. Thanks for caring - your view of trade and commerce is in tune with a 1920-50s point of view and needs developing. It just dropped off the bottom of my todo list. --ClemRutter (talk) 11:41, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm busy with real life and funerals at the minute but will visit the library before it closes (for good?). I'm just distracting myself today but as a product of the Lancashire mills & mines I will search for some material when I've got this week over with.--J3Mrs (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

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