The History of Manchester

Although the history of Manchester stretches back to Roman times, when a small settlement grew up around the Roman fort known as Mamuciam, it was not until the later years of the eighteenth century that it became a population centre of any great magnitude. Records indicate the population grew from 10,000 to approaching 80,000 in just a few decades, increasing to around 150,000 by the Industrial Revolution, which saw its transformation into the country’s and the world’s leading industrial metropolis.

The engine for this change was cotton, which began to be imported via the port of Liverpool and which was delivered by canal to Manchester in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The rapid and profitable boom in textile manufacture saw the streets of Manchester and surrounding towns become home to huge numbers of cotton mills, textile print works and engineering workshops. The expansion of transport links facilitated this development. In 1824, one of the world’s first public omnibus services began in Manchester, quickly followed in 1830 by the opening of the first steam passenger railway linking

Liverpool and Manchester.

Often overlooked, however, was the ‘human fuel’ that made all this possible. The promise of work, however poor the pay, however bad the conditions, resulted in wave after wave of immigration from the surrounding countryside and abroad, the villages and towns of Ireland in particular, where terrible poverty and the threat of famine drove whole families to leave everything they knew for a life in ‘Cottonopolis’, as the city was dubbed.


Paraphrase practice

Decide if these expressions from the text above are similar in meaning to the expressions in italics or not.

1 of any great magnitude                  of some size and importance
2 metropolis                                      capital city
3 the engine for this change              what was mainly responsible for this development
4 rapid …boom in                             quick change in
5 facilitated this                                 made this possible
6 often overlooked                            with a view over a particular place


Identifying text types
We read different sorts of texts in different ways and for different purposes. For example,
we don’t read a telephone directory for pleasure, or try to learn facts from an advertisement. Being able to identify what sort of text you are reading helps you in many ways. Understanding the purpose of the text and knowing how the author expects you to react gives you control over how to read it more effectively.

Work in pairs. Discuss the differences between the types of text below.
Think about:

• format and layout 
• fact and opinion 
• register and language 
• grammar and vocabulary 
• headings and illustrations 
• length.

1 an advertisement / a history book
2 a legal document / a newspaper article
3 a personal story / a book review
4 an information leaflet / an encyclopaedia

Skimming for style
Read these extracts (A–H) from different types of text about immigration and
match them to the text types in Exercise 4.

1.
Immigration derives from the Latin word migratio and means the act of a foreigner entering a country in the aim of obtaining the right of permanent residence. Immigration may have economic or political motivation, or be a matter of family reunification or caused by natural disaster.
In many cases, immigrants simply desire to improve their circumstances by relocating.

2.
Timofey Pnin is surely one of the most memorable of Nabokov’s characters. We meet a bald and middle-aged teacher of Russian, and discover that he’s completely lost. Much that he encounters in the world around him is a source of confusion, including timetables, the use of articles in English and also – comically – the habits of the Americans who are his neighbours. These are all things that many if not all fellow immigrants are likely to have in common with him. Yet Pnin is a unique character, both in life and in literature.

The precise date of the first human occupation of Australia is likely to remain unknown, but evidence has been uncovered to suggest human presence on the continent for at least 4 0,000 years. Migration from europe dates from 1788, when the first transports bearing convicted criminals made the long journey south. This was quickly followed in the early 1790s by the first wave of voluntary – and hence free – immigrants.