Introduction

In 1905 Liverpool was still by a wide margin the largest port in the country administered by a single port authority, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board (MD&HB). It was the second port in the Empire in terms of the value of goods handled and Britain’s largest export port. This situation resulted from nearly two centuries of investment in the infrastructure of the port, beginning with the Liverpool Corporation’s decision in 1709 to seek an Act of Parliament to enable the construction of what was to be the first commercial wet dock in the world....

Councillors and commerce in Liverpool, 1650–1750

ABSTRACTLiverpool grew remarkably in the century after 1650 outpacing long-established ports like Bristol and Hull. In part this was due to advantages of location, in part to the ambitions of its merchants. The council opened a wet dock in 1715, a pioneering project which gave the port an unusual trading advantage. This paper explains that event by tracing the emergence of merchants on the council in the late seventeenth century and, by analysing port book evidence, argues that they assumed a trading dominance in the town which was especially strong about 1700. Their powerful position on the council was, in part, the result of a new town charter of 1695. Political and economic factors worked together to propel the town towards its spectacular eighteenth-century economic development.