British Isles Geography: England, Liverpool, and Western Europe Relations

geography 106 world regional geography module for part 2 we're going to examine the British Isles and its relationship

with Western Europe in particular we'll be focusing on the country of England and we're going to look at a major

industrial complex there in the city of Liverpool through a video case study now we're talking about or pink islands the

big island is called Britain the smaller one Ireland on the island of Britain we have England Scotland and Wales when we

add in Northern Ireland as a country collectively that's known as the United Kingdom and the major power source there

is England the remainder the bulk of the Ireland the Isle of Ireland is the country of Ireland the British Isles are

distinct from Europe for several reasons buffered by the ocean and especially this body of water here the English

Channel really helped protect the British community it led to the country becoming a dominant sea power it led to

them safely being able to travel on the oceans and trade and it really increased opportunities for exploration and

colonization and the British are going to be very active colonizers at one point in the late 1800s a quarter of our

planet was under British control so this really opens up opportunities first for merchant capitalist activities a lot of

which will be concentrated in the port city of London and then later through the Industrial Revolution and the

industrial capitalist era this one being more geographically spread now initially and the merchants capital is there a lot

of handmade goods being manufactured in and around London put on boats and sent off

captive markets around the world raw materials collected from around the world brought back in to again the

handmade businesses the handmade product businesses in and around there when we get into the Industrial Revolution and

the development of steam power that's gonna transform how we make things and where we make things huge industrial

concentrations are going to be built up where there's coal we talked before about the importance of coal as a fuel

source so instead of the expense of shipping rocks down to London to only burn them up instead we see the

development of industry in and around coal fields and that's what's shown in gray on this map this area here often

referred to as the Midlands really is going to grow in terms of economic importance the port city of Liverpool

will be especially important now we're going to be sailing out of here and into the Atlantic to safely trade and bring

in raw materials to really power up this huge industrial complex even during the two world wars the body of water between

the island of Britain and mainland Europe the English Channel really provides a buffer a safety barrier it

allowed the United Kingdom especially in the late 1800s in the first part of the 1900s to remain a political and military

powerhouse but then a couple of things are going to happen that changes us first throughout the 1900s and

especially following World War Two the colonial structure collapses a lot of the colonies fighting for their

independence regaining that and really taking away being a source of cheap raw materials in a captive market for

British goods this has a major impact on the British economy second thing that has a major impact was World War two we

said there wasn't much destruction in the southern part of the island of Britain because of that why

barrier on the other hand Western Europe saw incredible destruction infrastructure and industry destroyed

following World War two with the help of US businesses and money things like the Bretton Woods Agreement and the Marshall

Plan there is going to be concerted effort to rebuild Western Europe when this area gets rebuilt in terms of

infrastructure and industry it will be rebuilt with modern technologies over the period of the war and following we

see a shift from Heavy Industries and the need for coal and iron ore to lighter industries like specialty

Steel's and aluminum or plastics and film we're gonna see a change in how things are made and what they're made

from as Western Europe becomes a major growth market we also see the need for rail to increase as compared to

long-distance shipping on the ocean this is not gonna help England because it's not gonna get rebuilt instead what we're

going to see is the major industrial areas such as around Liverpool things that were once thriving ports and

manufacturing areas they're gonna decline the dockyards that had tens of thousands of people employed and the

movements of goods are gonna be unemployed the factories are gonna close and we're gonna have substantial

economic decline add to that if they were able to be competitive and the major market now is in Western Europe

that English channel has become a major barrier you're not going to go load things onto a ship to sail it around

there what we need is a rail link now add to that the way we move goods dramatically changes now starting in the

70s we see a much greater increase in the use of containers now this may seem simple but back pre-world War two we

tend to take a big ship and fill its hold with stuff loosely whether it's agricultural products or oil or

manufactured goods all that stuff would have to be handled out by humans starting in the 70s we start to use

containers especially for manufactured goods 90% of all non bulk cargo now moves in these metal boxes not only do

we have these customized packages but the way we handle them is different large cranes such as in the image in the

bottom right pick up these containers and load them onto ships we need a crane operator and a few other workers nothing

like we did for employment when we had thousands and thousands of people having to handle pack unpack large ships in

addition modes of transportation that used to compete ship railroad now can be integrated we can lift these containers

on and off of boats place them on flatbed rail cars or flatbed trucks and integrate how we move things this really

added to the isolation of the island of Britain from mainland Europe that is until an engineering marvel happened

beginning in 1988 and opening in 1994 we're gonna have the building of the English Channel Tunnel

they're gonna start digging on the English side start digging on the French side dig

under the ocean meet in the middle and we have the creation of the English Channel Tunnel a major rail tunnel if

you look at the photo in the lower left you can see the two main lines entering into the tunnel one going in each

direction and then the upper right of that photo you can see the water the English Channel Tunnel this opened the

door for England to once again participate in the Western Europe economy it allows them once the

to be tied now by train Goods can come into the Liverpool docks be dispatched put on a truck or a train 15 hours later

they're in Paris 36 hours later they're in Milan in northern Italy they are increasingly once again tied that's

where the movement of goods we still see substantial decline in terms of the production of goods you're going to look

at a video of Liverpool that will not only show you how movement of goods changes but also how the nature of an

economy shifts from secondary to tertiary and quaternary