Liam's Irish Traditional Music - Irelands culture and tradition

The revolution that had occurred in Belfast was the introduction of the factory system. During the eighteenth century products, such as cotton, of the British colonies in the West Indies would come in to British ports and from there the raw goods were either re-exported or transferred to the finishing industries. The domestic system of industry was replaced by new methods of production as new machinery and an organized system of labour were brought in.

As Britain became the leading industrial nation. The territories ruled by the Westminster Parliament produced goods for Britain. After the Act of Union, Belfast became the leading industrial city of Ireland, and served the needs of the second British Empire which developed during the Victorian era.

Raw cotton was imported from the West Indies, India and America. For a brief period the American Civil War caused a "cotton famine" in Ireland and the linen industry expanded. Manufacturing profits rose from £6¼ million to £10 million by 1864. After 1865, growth in both linen and cotton exports from Ireland gradually declined. The industry continued to run on female labour and wages remained low.

The engineering skills, which had been needed to produce textile machinery, were now applied in a different way. Edward Harland founded a shipbuilding yard, which turned Belfast into a national and international engineering and shipbuilding centre. The experiments in iron ships produced the famous Titanic. Belfast experienced a massive increase in migrants during this period. Catholics settled in the Falls Road area of Belfast, and Protestants in the Shankhill Road. Where the two communities came into contact, there were often disturbances.

By the middle of the nineteenth century Belfast was the most prosperous city in Ireland, and one of the largest cities in Great Britain, roads and ports were developed to provide the necessary transport links. Laissez-faire policies were in operation in Ireland, and large industries were allowed to develop. The rest of Ireland suffered, as it lacked large-scale industry or concentrated on agriculture. Although the working classes in both Britain and Ireland had a higher standard of living as a result of industrialization, the Irish economy still lagged behind.

The British Empire was at its height over this period, and Belfast industry benefited from this, Irish industrialists valued the British connection and wished to retain it, Belfast could not survive without the support of British industry, which supplied the raw resources it lacked of steel its shipbuilding industry was the backbone of the British navy and the strength of the navy controlled the sea lanes to the British Empire