page_title: History of Birmingham
section_title: Enlightenment, Nonconformism and industrial innovation
hierarchical_section_title: History of Birmingham / The Midlands Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, 1680–1791 / Enlightenment, Nonconformism and industrial innovation
caption_attribution_description: Illustration from Lewis Paul's 1758 patent for a roller spinning machine
context_page_description: Birmingham has seen 1400 years of growth, during which time it has evolved from a small 7th century Anglo Saxon hamlet on the edge of the Forest of Arden at the fringe of early Mercia to become a major city. A combination of immigration, innovation and civic pride helped to bring about major social and economic reforms and to create the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the growth of similar cities across the world.
  The last 200 years have seen Birmingham rise from market town into the fastest-growing city of the 19th century, spurred on by a combination of civic investment, scientific achievement, commercial innovation and by a steady influx of migrant workers into its suburbs. By the 20th century Birmingham had become the metropolitan hub of the United Kingdom's manufacturing and automotive industries, having earned itself a reputation first as a city of canals, then of cars, and most recently as a major European convention and shopping destination.
  By the beginning of the 21st century, Birmingham lay at the heart of a major post-industrial metropolis surrounded by significant educational, manufacturing, shopping, sporting and conferencing facilities.
context_section_description: The 18th century saw the sudden emergence of Birmingham at the forefront of worldwide developments in science, technology, medicine, philosophy and natural history as part of the cultural transformation now known as the Midlands Enlightenment. By the second half of the century the town's leading thinkers – particularly members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham such as Joseph Priestley, James Keir, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, William Withering and Erasmus Darwin – had become widely influential participants in the Republic of Letters, the free circulation of ideas and information among the developing pan-European and trans-Atlantic intellectual elite. The Lunar Society was "the most important private scientific association in eighteenth-century England" and the Midlands Enlightenment "dominated the English experience of enlightenment", but also maintained close links with other major centres of the Age of Enlightenment, particularly the universities of the Scottish Enlightenment, the Royal Society in London, and scientists, philosophers and academicians in France, Sweden, Saxony, Russia and America.
  This "miracle birth" has traditionally been seen as a result of Birmingham's status as a stronghold of religious Nonconformism, creating a free-thinking culture unconstrained by the established Church of England. This accords with wider historical theories such as the Merton thesis and the Weber thesis, that see Protestant culture as a major factor in the rise of experimental science and industrial capitalism within Europe. Birmingham had a vigorous and confident Nonconformist community by the 1680s, at a time when freedom of worship for Nonconformists nationally had yet to be granted; and by the 1740s this had developed into an influential group of Rational Dissenters. Around 15% of households in Birmingham were members of Nonconformist congregations in the mid-18th century, compared to a national average of 4–5%. Presbyterians and Quakers in particular also had a level of influence within the town that was disproportionate to their numbers, customarily holding the position of Low Bailiff – the most powerful position in the town's local government – from 1733, and making up over a quarter of the Street Commissioners appointed in 1769, despite being legally barred from holding office until 1828. Despite this, Birmingham's Enlightenment was by no means a purely Nonconformist phenomenon: the members of the Lunar Society had a wide range of religious backgrounds, and Anglicans formed a majority of all sections of Birmingham society throughout the period.
  Recent scholarship no longer sees the Midlands Enlightenment as primarily having an industrial or technological focus. Analysis of the subject-matter of Lunar Society meetings shows that its main concern was with pure scientific investigation rather than manufacturing, and the influence of Midlands Enlightenment thinkers can be seen in areas as diverse as education, the philosophy of mind, Romantic poetry, the theory of evolution and the invention of photography. A distinctive and significant feature of the Midlands Enlightenment, however, that partly resulted from Birmingham's unusually high level of social mobility, was the close relationship between the practitioners of theoretical science and those of practical manufacturing. The Lunar Society included industrialists such as Samuel Galton, Jr. as well as intellectuals such as Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley; scientific lecturers such as John Warltire and Adam Walker communicated basic Newtonian principles widely to the town's manufacturing classes; and men such as Matthew Boulton, James Keir, James Watt and John Roebuck were simultaneously highly regarded both as scientists and as technologists, and in some cases also as businessmen. The intellectual climate of 18th century Birmingham was therefore unusually conducive to the transfer of knowledge from the pure sciences to the technology and processes of manufacturing, and the feeding back of the results of this to create a "chain reaction of innovation".
  The Midlands Enl
caption: Detail from Lewis Paul's 1758 second patent for a roller spinning machine
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