North East England, 1850-1914

A study of trade, business and economy in the North East reveals it to be a more diverse and less unified region than popularly perceived. The North East produced coal, iron, steel and ships on an unprecedented scale in the decades before the Great War, a time at which it acquired its persistent image as one of the world's great export-driven industrial districts. However, the North East was far from being a single and unified region, and its constituent towns and rivers often worked in fierce c